Talk:Artificial life

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Archive 1 (before Numsgil's major refactoring)

1 November 2006's New Page
2 Removal of link to article by Subhash Kak
3 What "artificial life" is not
4 What "artificial life" is
5 Link to artificial consciousness
6 Synthetic life
7 Responding to RFC
8 RFC continued
9 Telling questions
10 Definition of ALife
11 Synthetic Life and Biology
12 Simulated reality
13 My (Numsgil's) Position on synthetic life and artificial life
14 A partial statement of Paul Beardsell's views on what should be in the artificial life article
15 On the current state of the article.
16 Synthetic biology and (the study of) artificial life

[edit] November 2006's New Page

I've rewritten the main page entirely. The most possibly controversial change is the total removal of the list of notable figures (some of which aren't that notable anyway). Please tell me of any major problems with my change. In a week or so I'll be deleting or moving passages from this talk page that no longer apply. --Numsgil 04:41, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Well done, and much needed. I personally think the open questions in artficial life should remain even in the new versionas a paragraph in itself. Also, it would be interesting to make a philogenic tree of models and programs. For example Tierra being the predecessor of Avida. etc. I moved the philosophy above, so that we can refer to it in the rest of the page. And I connected to the weak alife in the optimization problem part--141.35.12.219 17:17, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Most of the open questions seemed to relate to wet alife, which I really think should go in the wet alife article, especially since that article is so underdeveloped. I'm thinking this "main" alife page should strictly cover computer models, since that tends to be the most common "alife". Mixing the two in the same article really makes things messy. Other than perhaps some base philosophy, they differ by just about everything possible.

I think a phylogenic tree of the different programs would be very interesting, though I'm not sure all the simulators in the digital simulator page could be directly added to it. At the very least a limited diagram picture would help add some more graphics to the page.--Numsgil 20:32, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of link to article by Subhash Kak

I removed the link to http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v6i42_kak.html because I felt it falls in the realm of original research, and doesn't seem to be more than casual link dropping. I'm certainly for discussion of criticism about Artificial Life in the article, but I'd prefer it to be a generalization of many people's viewpoints, and I'd like it to go in its own section. --Numsgil 04:35, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What "artificial life" is not

We have been at this for some time. Various positions put forth, and some concensus developed, it is probably a good time to boil this discussion down to a series of bullet lists, one for each author. This way, we can remove the verbiage, and produce an article that is mutually satisfying to us all. William R. Buckley 20:47, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

"Artificial life" is not the study of a phenomenon, it is the phenomenon itself. "Life" is not the "study of living things", the name for that is "biology". Similarly, the "study of synthesized / manufuactured / artifically created life" would be "artificial biology", not "artificial life". Paul Beardsell 00:28, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Not quite, Paul. Biology is the study of natural life. It is not the study of living things. If the living thing does not originate within the natural world, it is not the subject of biology. Biology is now, and will forever be, the more subject-specific field of study. William R. Buckley 07:43, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

I looked at the definition attributed to Chris Langton, on the zooland website. I agree with Chris that nothing in principle prevents biologists from studying living systems other than the carbon based systems found naturally on Earth. I do not agree with him that biology is about all living systems. Biology has always been dedicated to the naturally occurring living systems we find on Earth. Indeed, in the next sentence, his reasoning respecting the limits thereput to theoretical biology proves the claim, and justifies creation of a new field. It is this new field, artificial life, that accepts living systems of any form and foundation.

Though in principle biology could subsume artificial life, it is not likely to be that way. The terms carry baggage in opposition, and this will reinforce the current usage of terms. Were some life form to visit us from deep space, we would apply the sugar/lipid/amino acid/nucleic acid test to determine if it is biological. If not, then a new category would be created, and a new field named.

Biology is about carbon based life. Artificial life is about all other life. Biology knows well the effects of contingency upon language. In time, the colloquial use of terms feeds back into academia, and there too this current usage of the terms biology and artificial life will be reinforced. Hundreds of years from now, these terms will remain distinct. William R. Buckley 08:28, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

In the article, again and again, we say things like "artificial life is the study of simulations". No! It might be a "pointless life" to do such a thing, or an "exciting life", but it is not "artificial life"! Fixed in article. Paul Beardsell 00:28, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

The term "artificial life" applies to a very specific field that intersects biology and computer science. The article specifically refers to that field of research and artistic expression that is catalogued in the Artificial Life scientific journal and the periodic gathering of interested participants for the ALife conferences. Artificial Life is the study of life and life's evolution, as a subset of the larger Biology using methods and materials involved with computer science. Artificial life is often said to be a subset of Bio Informatics.

Actually, Numsgil, you are wrong on this point. As Christopher G. Langton stated at the first alife conference, which I attended, alife is the study of life as we know it within the LARGER context of life as it might be. You got that point backwards. Alife is not a subset of biology. Indeed, biology is a (proper) subset of alife. William R. Buckley 19:42, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Another take on this seems appropriate. Identification of the proper relationship between fields of study is not always an easy task. I will not accept that alife is a subset of biology. However, it may be best to understand the relationship between both fields as having an intersection that is empty. I am torn, it would seem, between biology as a proper subset of alife, and the two being non-intersecting proper subsets of a larger whole, say the field of living systems. This may really be the notion that Langton supports. He used the phrase *life as it might be* and for me, the word *might* suggests inclusion of all cases. On the other hand, the practical reality is that alife models derive from non-biological sources. Oh, there may be a few cases where the subject matter examined is biological via alife methods. It is hard to tease these two fields apart, and alife has the larger scope, it admits more methods and more media, than does biology. At least the fields are on par, and reasonably alife contains biology.

I should comment on the word *might* versus the word *could* as used in the immediate discussion. For me, in the context given hereabout, both words refer to the notion of possibility; they are synonymous. As I recall, Langton used the work *might* at ALife I. Elsewhere, I see the phrase to include the word *could* instead of *might* such as may be used in published papers. Bottom line: life-as-it-might-be means the same thing as life-as-it-could-be. William R. Buckley 22:31, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I see your point. Originally my point was that Artificial Life is generally defined in any university setting or in grants as a field within Bio Informatics. In reality, it's classification is difficult to define. In my mind, ALife exists in the void between proper Biology, Chemistry, and Computer Science. Biology does not neatly fit within the confines of the current ALife field any more than the current ALife field dits neatly within the confines of Biology. This might actually be a large part of why funding for ALife is so scarce compared with Artificial Intelligence (not that AI gets all that much money anyway). AI seems to fit neatly within Computer Science (not that it doesn't draw from other fields). --Numsgil 04:32, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

One more point. Alife includes the computational and the physical models. Wet alife is alife. It is not an estranged subfield, a bastard child, or the like. Alife as a field does not discriminate between the models. Both are equally part of the field. Hence, the construction of the opening paragraph of the article is not sufficiently balanced. It draws a distinction between model types that simply is not reflected within the field, and would be rejected by field researchers. This distiction needs to be removed. William R. Buckley 20:20, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree, as I've reread the opening paragraph several times this last week this has stuck out at me more and more. But we can't ignore the fact that ALife in silico is almost always just refered to as "ALife" unless its being compared with Wet Alife, while the reverse isn't nearly as true. The opening paragraph could be worded better, but the article segregation of the two still seems proper. Other than sharing some basic philosophy, the two are about as different as two things can be. The methodology, materials, skills, etc. do not overlap neatly. Cellular Autonoma do not exist as a useful construct within Wet Alife anymore than physical proteins (as opposed to the idea of proteins) do for in silico Alife. The opening paragraph probably needs to start as describing ALife as a whole and the clearly differentiate between Wet Alife and in silico Alife, and then proceed to state that since the term Alife is also used to describe ALife studies in silico specifically, the article will explore that particular sub field. --Numsgil 04:32, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

You are specifically thinking of artificial life being an adjective followed by a noun. Meaning life that is created artificially. This article is about a compound word "artificial life" being used to describe a very specific scientific and artistic field that deals with evolution of agents. In your context, metaphysics is the rule. This was largely the problem with the old article, and the problem I'm specifically fighting in the current page. This isn't the article to discuss the implications of androids, bio engineering, etc. etc. It is only being used to describe a very specific field of research. --Numsgil 01:47, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Numsgil, I argue that the article is about both the field of research, and the items researched. Thus, alife studies alife; the field studies its subject, both having the same name. I should point out that in reworking the opening paragraph, nowhere does it state that the subject of the field, and the field itself, are named identically. Indeed, there is no need to explicitly state so. Rather, this name usage can be easily transfered to the reader by connotation, through carefully worded exposition.

The change you made thereafter does help to simplify wording, a benefit to pedestrian readers. I believe my change further improves readability.

I agree, thanks ;) --Numsgil 09:32, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

What is needed is a page called 'Artificial life examples' instead of a new name like 'synthetic life' as the former gives more consistent naming and context. Efforts to build an hierarchy of articles to cover the topic of alife is a laudable goal. Consistent naming can facilitate that goal. William R. Buckley 07:15, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

I think there's a conceptual problem in calling what alife studies "artificial life". Issues of confusion aside, a single artificial life form, say an AI that passes the turing test, while maybe called a life form, isn't really part of what alife studies. That's the realm of AI. Likewise, there are some things which are studied in alife but probably wouldn't be considered alive even under the most lenient definition. Conway's game of life for instance, or genetic algorithms. What I call "synthetic" life, and the agents studied in alife, do have some overlap, however, neither is contained entirely within the other. Add to this the fact that calling what alife studies "artificial life" or even "synthetic life" denies the legitimacy of the question between weak and strong philosophies. That is, you seem to automatically consider it alive. I don't know what wet alife would call what it studies, but I think the term "digital organism" or even just agent, when applied to alife in silico, is a far more appropriate label (and far more common) than anything with the word "life" in it. --Numsgil 11:41, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

It is perhaps easy for you to see that possession of the property of being alive does not imply possession of the property of being intelligent; for example, fish are stupid. Less easy to see is that possession the property of intelligence does not imply possession of the property of life. AI is not the provence of AL. I would expect that little discussion of AI occurs in AL settings. Indeed, at ALife X, I did not observe a single talk respecting an issue of intelligence within an artificial system. Agreed is that most of the models are lacking. The key element they miss is embodiment. They are therefore models of life, not life itself. I think Bob Ulanowicz expressed his concerns with alife models using the word *entailment* though I do not recall exactly. Simply put, the processes of life are not employed in AI models, and so an AI is not an alife. I agree with the strong position, and suggest that if you do not so agree, then you are at minimum on the precipice of either bigotry (biocentrism) or vitalism (there is something extra-physical about life - something not available from the matter of the universe).

Exactly, AI is not the provence of AL. But there might be a time in the future when AI reaches the goal of something that could be considered alive, depending a great deal on your definition of life. There is an overlap between what would be considered valid objects of study in Alife and what lay people might call "artificial" life forms, but it is far from a perfect overlap. An article that discusses the idea of artificially created life and an article that discusses valid objects of study within the ALife field need to be seperate. They are not the same.

A weak alife position may be the minority within the Alife field, but it is hardly the minority in science or even the general public. The present textbook definition of life taught in any bio classroom entirely prevents anything digital from being alive. We don't understand the processes of life well enough to make any claims about its reproducibility. There may well be some "vitality" that is not reproducable, and entirely prevents us from creating anything that is properly alive (despite how it would consternate countless people of science). My personal philosophy is that strong alife is possible, but most or all present simulators have not yet reached the necessary complexity to call their agents "alive" (primarily a lack of computing power is to blame). So I'm primarily playing devil's advocate on this point. The mass scientific concensus as I understand it is that there does not exist anything that could properly be deemed "synthetic life", and there have been more than one eminant biologist to posit that life in silico is strictly impossible. Robert Rosen for instance. An article on synthetic life needs to explain that. An article on artificial life examples does not. --Numsgil 11:41, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Rober Rosen was mistaken. Nothing more. William R. Buckley 19:55, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Probably, but that's not my point. Obviously there are notable biologists who would take a weak alife position (if that!). Therefore, we should not assume a strong alife position in any articles, and respect both positions. Which would require the seperation of articles discussing synthetic life (a theoretical entity) and examples of the subject of study of alife researchers (a real and present entity). --Numsgil 09:40, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Jay, first, you are not giving enough time to the construction of your point. For instance, the second sentence above is unclear. You probably mean, "Obviously there are notable biologists who would not take either the strong on weak positions respecting alife." Do remember, there are notable biologists who do take the strong position, Tom Ray being but one example. I have personal contact with a number of well known and respected biologists, who have privately expressed their acceptance of the fundamental percept of alife, that life is a process and not a material phenomenon. William R. Buckley 22:44, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

You should carefully consider the difference between a completely computational model and one including physical expression. Robots that are able to self-replicate will experience the effects of natural selection. I hold a philosophical position that computation allows any system to circumvent the effects of natural selection but, that does not mean that such systems must avail themselves of such opportunity. Indeed, living systems, up to human kind, have simply not had access to the means to effect such wresting from chance, and the impending change to technology, such that germ-line therapy is functional, will allow humans to wrest their genetic destiny from the clutches of natural selection. Robots are a part of the physical universe, and so can be expected to exhibit the processes inherent thereto (i.e. the physical universe). William R. Buckley 22:44, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

The point about what is taught in a biology classroom belies the problem with mixing biology and alife. The biological definition of life is, ahem, biocentric. Start with a bias, and you get biased results. And, it is not true to say that no digital form has been judged as corresponding to a biological form - the computer virus, and this by Eugene Spafford. To the extent that a biological virus is a lifeform, Spafford accepts computational viruses as a lifeform, this acceptance coming during the ALife II gathering. William R. Buckley 19:55, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

No doubt there is a bias in the present definition of life. But acknowledging it as such does not mean it will suddenly go away. As an encyclopedic entry, any articles which broach this subject should do so flatly and without bias, which means even presenting points of view that are wrong if they are strongly supported or held, especially when evidence one way or another is not available. As for viruses, I would point out that it is not generally accepted that viruses are alive. This is still a point of heated debate. An article on synthetic life would be well behooved to do as the virus page has done and demonstrate that this is a subject of debate. An article on artificial life objects of study does not need to do this, because it is entirely immaterial if the object of study by alife researchers is alive or not. Again, the example of genetic algorithms. Not alive, but still valid research. Clearly an article seperation between synthetic life and any articles dealing with alife research is needed. --Numsgil 09:40, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

You give here another non-sequitur. Sure, acknowledging bias fails to eliminate it, and why should I expect otherwise. The important part of your statement is the flat presentation; for this, I am all in favor. I will strongly battle for language such as that which I use in describing the field subject of this article. I will also strongly back you for organisational efforts. There are reasons to break the article into many, and several have been discussed. There is also need for citable publications, so as to justify each and every sentence of the article. The term synthetic life is probably a well used designation. The problem with using same to build articles is that the term will have very specific implications associated with its use in the field, and same is not likely to be expressed through the open editing process of Wikipedia. Further, it allows the term to be defined within a general article, and so facilitate comparison and contrast of organism categories. William R. Buckley 22:44, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Whether viruses are accepted as life or not is not the point of my argument. Rather, it is that some express their satisfaction that whatever is the phenomena that biological viruses represent, it is exactly the same thing with computational viruses. In this one case, researchers of various fields have concurred with the view that these two things are examples of the same phenomenon. I will review the virus page and consider the other point you make, regarding article construction. William R. Buckley 22:44, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Do understand also that some in the field are specifically interested in whether a particular example represents life, or only a model of life. For instance, my goal is the construction of life, not models of life. I seek to know exactly those necessary components such that a living system can be initiated into life, thereafter to perpetuate its processes in the face of its environment, a computational one. Wet alifers also seek the same kind of result but, for the physical universe. William R. Buckley 22:44, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

You may also find interest in the words of Richard Dawkins, who at ALife I opened his talk with the statement, "There are some embryologies which are pregnant with possibility, and then there are some that are not." The last statement he uttered during his talk is, "Of all the systems that I have seen at this artificial life workshop, Core War is the least cheat model." So, when you look at the models that are offered, understand that he who is perhaps the most eminent of Darwinists says that some computational models are promising.

I am indeed interested, but the way you present those quotes it sounds to me as if Dawkins was lamenting that the majority of simulators in existance are cheating. Core War is the ancient predecessor to most alife simulators, and Dawkins saying that that was the best model would seem to point to his belief that alife research has followed faulty reasoning ("cheating") and is headed down the wrong course. A commonly held position among many biologists, as far as I can tell. This would also explain his shying away from alife research in recent years. But I'm reading the quotes out of context, so perhaps I'm reading them wrong? --Numsgil 09:40, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

That is just wishful thinking on your part, I think. Dawkins was rendering praise, because the element of natural selection is built into Core War. He spent the interim period between the previously given quotes expressing the degree to which he was committed to a Darwinian view. He was specifically pointing out that one model shown him had an image consistent with his image of biological life. He was trying to guide non-biologists, showing them what he as a biologist found interesting, promising, and analogous. Your subsequent sentence adds to the position I give, saying that the model shown in Core War was the notable exception to the cheating of other models. William R. Buckley 22:44, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Don't be so sure that the problem with most alife models is computational throughput. William R. Buckley 19:55, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I think that computational limits are creating limits on what can be done with simulators. I don't think that the majority of simulators in existance, given infinite computational resources, would ever achieve anything as remarkably intricate and complex as even a single bacterium. There seems to be a complexity ceiling, which has to do with the simplistic representations of life that simulators have to use because of computational limits. No computers in existance could handle the simulation of even a single real bacterium. Protein folding alone is a not a nail but a whole railroad tie in the coffin. In another, say, 50 or 100 years when parallel computing or quantum computing allows us to broach these sorts of issues, maybe we'll start to see some truly complex digital organisms. Or maybe not. But the present computing power is insufficient to create something that could be considered alive, IMO. --Numsgil 09:40, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Throughput is always an issue. No user wants to have to wait until they press the enter key in order to get an answer in return. Delay in computation will ever be a source of annoyance. William R. Buckley 22:44, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Not everybody is interested in simulation. Infinite computational resources applied to a single bacterium, seems like overkill. Simulation of the physico-chemical processes, atom by atom, state by state, given some acceptable quantisation, is likely supportable upon less than infinite computational resources. You will kill your argument with hyperbole. As for protein folding, I think it is an NP problem, and that P does not equal NP. Indeed, you can formulate the protein folding problem as the corollary to the traveling salesman problem. In TSP, you know the distances between cities but not the shortest path. In protein folding, you know the shortest path (along the backbone) but not the distances between chiral carbons. Steric hinderence between residues ensures that the shortest path between the chiral carbons of sterically interacting residues is about 1.4 (as I recall) times the separation between adjacent chiral carbons. Hence, the shortest path must be along the backbone. I think from this model you can easily see that PFP is at least as hard as TSP. William R. Buckley 22:44, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I mean not vitality, but a vital force, such as that offered in the 1800s, for the difference between life and non-life. I claim there is no vital force, life is nothing more than epicomplexity upon epicomplexity, and the substrate is immaterial.

Finally, you do not have the basis upon which to claim the position of the public vis-á-vis the acceptance of the strong versus the weak position, much less the position of established researchers (i.e. practicing scientists, regardless of field). You assert without proof. William R. Buckley 19:55, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I know what you mean, I'm using it the same way (using vitality as the nominative form where you use vital force, both having an adjective form: vitality). Your claim is unfounded and unproven, so any presentation of it in an article on wikipedia needs to come from that direction. I would agree with your position, but there are many who would not.

It is not proven but I think well founded, if only by anecdote. Balanced presentation is agreed. William R. Buckley 22:44, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

If I may, I would relate anecdotal evidence. In my Humanities class not so long ago (a year ago perhaps) we were reading Frankenstein. The discussion moved towards wether creating living substance from non living matter was possible at all. To my considerable surprise, at least 5 or 6 kids out of my 12 to 18 person class (not sure how full it was that day ;)) argued that it was not. They didn't state in so many words, but they were claiming basically what you are claiming against: that there is an inherant vitality in living organisms that is unreproducable by man. I don't agree with that position, but clearly the set of all people who hold this position is non zero. And if my humanities class is a fair sample of the general public (probably it's not, since all students were between 20 and 25), the proportion of people who believe that synthetic life is impossible is non trivial. My discussions with and readings from biologists point to a general biological disinterest to disdain for alife. What biologists embrace ALife seem to do so from the weak alife side, meaning that it's a valid research platform for study of natural selection, and not for creating life. I do not have proof for this assertion, but could you provide proof of the opposite? Isn't this your general impression as well? In the end, this is probably non trivial enough to present both points of view, again in the synthetic life article. This issue has no bearing on artificial life research's validity (even the weak alife position says that we can understand life through these models), though, and so probably shouldn't be discussed in alife articles except from the point of view of weak vs. strong philosophy. --Numsgil 09:40, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

It is not my general impression that biologists hold disdain for alife research. The degree of acceptance of premises varies, some holding that such research cannot create life, and some holding that such research can create life. I hold the latter position. This does not mean that all alife models engage in the creation of life, and indeed I would argue that precious few current models create life. The point is one of possibility, not of reality. Again, constructing a balanced and thorough article is the goal, and we probably have covered enough of the problem to have an overview of what to do. So, each should take his turn and make changes. As we find need, more discussion ensues. William R. Buckley 22:44, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

So, the offer is extended. Write a few paragraphs describing the structure you find desirable, and I will give a reply. A few iterations, and inputs of others like Paul, and concensus will give the best result. William R. Buckley 22:44, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Wet alife calls the subject of its study alife. Wet alife researchers are concerned to know if other molecules can be used as the store for genetic information, and if other kinds of molecules can be used for catalytic control, etc. So, perhaps a different long-chain sugar can be used to carry notations encoded in other than pyrimidines.

At the moment, the wet alife article is incredibly sparse. I personally lack anything more than a cursory knowledge of wet alife. Most likely because I come to Alife from a hobbyist's perspective, and it's hard to perform wet alife experiments in your house ;) While artificial life in the abstract studies life in all its forms, artificial life the present and real scientific field has studied primarily computational models of life with a minority of research involving "wet" alife, or that's my understanding anyway. Many things that could be called wet alife probably aren't (Biologists aren't fond of ALife in my experience). --Numsgil 11:41, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Your understanding regarding the distribution of efforts, physical and computational, seems correct. Very little work is done in wet alife ("walife" ?). ALife X enjoyed a presentation by Norman Packard, who is doing wet alife. Maybe one other person had something similar to discuss. So, the (vast) majority of alife work is computational. The robotic component is ascending.

It occurs to me that should we find extraterrestrial life, and should it be based upon the same chemistry as ourselves, that would be a deep philosophic and scientific problem. Well, if it were just one case, maybe not so much of a problem. But, if we were to find multiple examples, and in each case determine the same basic sugar/lipid/amino acid/nucleic acid composition, then we would again need to visit the notions of predetermination of life within the known universe. While we might expect to find life elsewhere in the universe, we should perhaps expect it to be different from life on Earth.

I would expect life found on planets with similar composition and radiant heat to be remarkably similar to us in biochemistry. Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen make up the majority of the (lighter) surface mass of the earth's crust. It makes sense for life to be made out of that. Silicon is the exception, but carbon makes a clearly superior building block for complex molecules over silicon, again in our environment (primarily because it's lighter I would say). I would expect a planet with more radiant heat, lower radiant heat, significantly stronger atmospheric pressure, or strongly different composition to have significantly different biochemistry. Obviously this is all theory, but I would wager a significant sum that life based on our present biochemistry is the optimal choice for existance in the narrow range of conditions that occur on Earth (or, using Gaia theory, occurred on Earth when Earth was young). Extremophiles represent outliers in this discussion, as they are hardly the norm. Life existing in the corona of the sun (should such a thing be possible) would probably be very different from what we're used to, perhaps based on matter in a plasmic state. --Numsgil 11:41, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

You might be getting yourself into trouble here. The notion that in similar circumstances life should be similar belies notions of vitalism. That the universe is designed for the emergence of life is a stretch that few scientists are prepared to make, though exceptions do exist. William R. Buckley 20:47, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not saying that the universe is predestined to make life in our image. I'm saying that our image is the (probable) optimal selection for the narrow range of conditions found on Earth. I would not begin to guess the commonality of those conditions. Rather, I would say that where (if) they arise, the corresponding life would have similar biochemistry to us. I would be surprised if macromolecules like DNA, RNA, etc. are common. I would not be suprised if alien life used proteins (meaning folded chains of amino acids) which shared many of the same amino acids we use. A good read, if you haven't already, is alternative biochemistry. --Numsgil 09:40, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Predestined? What about predisposed, however benignly, however without intention. If what we find is left-handed, DNA, and RNA (even though modified slightly), and so forth, we would be required to reexamine same as a form of evidence for God, so profound would be the experience. I should not be surprised if the narrow range of conditions here on Earth would elsewhere yield similar results but, not to the exclusion of alternatives. Sensitivity to initial conditions, and the subsequent tendency to freeze contingency within the phenotype should be expected to deliver substantial differences between examples of life in the physical universe at all levels of expression, microscopic to macroscopic. William R. Buckley 23:11, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. As you climb up the possibility chain, pure randomness gets "frozen" in the phenotypes. I would be quite surprised if it turned out that any alien life at all was digestable, for instance. Haha, imagine the strange mirror world where all isomers are reversed. ;)

As for "digital organism" I am fine with that for the digital cases. Wet alife does not produce such an organism, so the digital part must at least be eliminated. "Synthetic life" is not so annoying. Create an intermediate layer, called "Artificial Life Examples" with links to the various examples and their categories: digital organism, alternative chemical analog, etc.

Again, this relates to my ignorance in wet alife. Perhaps you could add to the wet alife page some examples of accomplishments made in wet alife. --Numsgil 11:41, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Look into the work of Norman Packard. He is a good starting point. Then search the web for similar topics. It is sure to yield a dozen projects, perhaps more. William R. Buckley 20:47, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Bottom line - alife studies life as it might be (the various forms of alife) while biology studies life as we know it (and in particular, the specific case of life here on Earth). William R. Buckley 02:41, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

There are issues to be discussed on the topic of synthetically produced life that do not neatly overlap the topics to be discussed on the objects of study in alife. Issues of ethics, obtainability, political rights, and treatment in fiction. AI, genetic engineering, robotics, and probably a host of other fields seek to create something that would probably be called a synthetic life form. These would be poorly discussed on a page for the objects of study for the alife field. Lastly, supposing a page for "artificial life examples" were created, would it be sufficiently unique from what the page at digital organism simulators discusses? Perhaps digital organism simulators needs to be expanded from a list? Actually, the majority of the current alife article could probably be labelled as "artificial life examples". --Numsgil 09:32, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, and more strongly, the majority of the current article should be moved to one labelled as "Artificial life examples." Only the most general information should appear in the root article, "Artificial life."

The issues of ethics, etc., do need to be discussed, and the root article is the best place. There tends to be a bit of personality-cult activity on wikipages, such as that demonstrated within the article "Cellular automata" by the praise given to Wolfram. All that kind of stuff needs to be buried within an article sub-tree, and not be placed in the root node of an article. William R. Buckley 02:41, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I reverted most of your edits, but, on my computer at least, it's not showing in the history page. I don't know if this is a random issue on my computer or if wikipedia is having an aneurism. It still shows the right text on the main article, though. --Numsgil 01:55, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I understand where you are coming from. But when artificial life actually exists (and you will acknowledge that a few already think it does and that many think that one day it will) what will you call it? "Artificial life" is a type of life, however far-fetched that concept may be. The argument I make above - life vs biology - is unanswered by you. Paul Beardsell 08:59, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

We will call it *life* and will recognise it as having an artificial, as opposed to natural, origin. Biological life, even when derived by artificial (read, human directed) means, will still be biological. Living systems borne of non-natural (artificial) mechanisms will still be alive. We will not change the usage of a field name, nor rename the field, so as to give a name to our product/progeny. Instead, we will recognise that the field has resulted in the production of that which the field studies, living systems, whether natural or artificial, and call it life. My colleagues in this field will likely support my position regarding nomenclature. William R. Buckley 19:31, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

The journal "Science" is not science - it is a journal about science. The journal "Artificial Life" is not artificial life - it is a journal about artificial life. The Earth is not a field of study - it is what geologists study. The body of knowledge about something is not the something. The somethingology is not the something. Artificial life is not a body of knowledge - it is the subject of a body of knowledge. Paul Beardsell 09:03, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Feel free to create an article about artificial life forms. We can link to it. But that's not what this article is about. Do a google search for "artificial life". What do you come up with? How many of the top 10 links deal with anything but artificial life the field? 0, that's how many. I don't care if you like it or not; the term "artifical life" applies to a very specific scientific discipline (and artistic discipline). It's a compound word that does not refer to life that is artificial, but to a field of study that examines life and evolution in the abstract.

I didn't invent the term, I offer no apology for it. I don't know or care if it's a good label for the field, but that's what the field's label is. Neither you nor I are in any position to make wide sweeping changes to the nomenclature of existing scientific fields.

Again, if you want to write an article that discusses artificial life forms, that's fine. We can add a disambiguation link at the top. But I vehemetely refuse discussing both topics in the same article, because they are so very different and only loosely related to each other. --Numsgil 13:25, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Declaring that artificial life and the study of artificial life are "only loosely related to one another", is profoundly wrong. "Vehemently" so. Paul Beardsell 23:01, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Usually in ALife literature, the subject of study is in general called either a digital organism or, in the case of sociological studies within Alife, an agent (though the term agents applies equally well to digital organisms). Most simulators define this definition further. Darwinbots, for instance, calls its agents "bots". And wether these bots attain "alive" status, become sentient, or solve cancer, they'll still be called "bots" (or perhaps biobots, or sapienbots, since Darwinbots likes to add short adjective prefixes, but that's beside the point). This is done to neatly avoid the connotations of calling something "alive" within ALife. The weak vs. strong ALife position is still an open question, and the term "life" is loaded with all sorts of conceptual baggage. --Numsgil 04:32, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I too will call artificial life, when it exists, "life". But how will we distinguish, on the occasions we need to (e.g. in legislation or in plain old casual conversation, perhaps with our artificial buddies), between naturally evolved life and synthesized life? You will call the latter "artificial life". Despite what you say above, all the journals / publications cited already do so. At best there is an inconsistency. The article starts out by saying "artificial life" is a field of study, and then it (or the references it cites) goes on to refer to the (potential) creations of this field of study as "artificial life". You cannot have it both ways. Or, if you must, you must reflect both uses in the topic's definition, not just the one. Paul Beardsell 21:19, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Can you point to a specific reference this article links that does this? Does it do this in a way that can be construed as definitive for the entire field? --Numsgil 04:32, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Paul, you begin by agreeing with me, then do an about-face on the issue. On first expression, we will call it life, period. If there becomes the need to distinguish between examples, then we will add qualifiers to our speech, but only then will we so do. Further, any such distinction drawn will reveal an underlying prejudice, a bigotry between life derived of non-directed means versus that derived of directed means: "I'm biological, and you're not!" William R. Buckley 22:25, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

William, I am not being inconsistent (as if that matters - I will not stick to my position in face of good contrary argument). We are addressing two different questions: I accept that artificial life will be regarded as truly being life by you and many others, and me, too! But not all people will agree. In law, for example, a distinction is likely to be made, at least initially. And within the field there will be occasions when it will be useful to distinguish between the e-coli that landed on the petri dish next to the manufactured wet alife organism. One will be the foreign natural bacteria and the other will be the locally manufactured example of artificial life. The question is not the philosophical one you insist on answering i.e. "Will artificial life truly be life?" but rather "What do we call artificial life to distinguish it from naturally occurring life when we need to make the distinction?" Paul Beardsell 22:47, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Paul, you use the word *occasion* which certainly implies other than always, and generally implies less than usual. And, consistency does matter, as any physicist will tell you. It shall be only a few who will not follow the norm then applicable, to call all seemingly alive things as being members of the category life. I urge that you are assuming an a priori requirement that distinction be made. I see no such causal implication for human social action. However, it is clear that for the special cases which concern you, where it is absolutely necessary to draw distinction on the basis of primary origin, then we shall call the two life and alife, and these are short for biological life and artificial life. Finally, it may even come to pass that more subclassification be imposed, so that alife exists in several occassionally specially identified forms.

Your question is thus answered - when not important, all is life, and when otherwise important, there is life and there is alife. William R. Buckley 22:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes! Thank you. "Artificial life" or "alife" is, according to the article, "the study of artificial life [forms]"...Paul Beardsell 03:09, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I would disagree. I don't think the article ever claims that the field of artificial life" studies artificial life forms. --Numsgil 07:36, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

...But you have used the terms "alife" and "artificial life" above to refer to the instances of life themselves, not to "the study of" or "the modelling of" artificial life forms. This, I imagine, to Numsgil's considerable dismay! Now, this is where I started this discussion and why I started it: The term "artificial life" does not mean the academic or practical discipline of theorising about or manufacturing devices which are alive. Or, if it does mean that, it does not mean that exclusively, as you have ably demonstrated. So, can I change the definition at the start of the article back now to encompass both meanings? Paul Beardsell 03:09, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I have changed the opening paragraph, Numsgil and I having thereafter worked to improve accessibility. See what changes you find desirable.

Coming next is a need to revise the second section, as it makes a great many unfounded claims. Also, we need to archive this topic. I think it is now resolved. William R. Buckley 07:57, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

No, not exclusively. Life is a class, made up of living systems. Alife is a class, made up of living systems having non-natural origin. Blife is a class, made up of living systems of natural origin, which we also call *life* in honor of blife having been the first kind of life that we came to know. Artificial life is a synonym for alife. Artificial life is also the name of the field that is dedicated to the understanding of living systems whatever their form. There are a great many words and names that serve multiple purposes.

The primary point which follows is not likely to reflect future term usage. Artificial life is equally well applied to the field, and the subject therein studied. This is as with the word life, which is used to refer to the sum total of one's experience (one's life), to refer to the category of living things (life), a term of temporal change (life time), and other variations of meaning. I do not see a need for different terms within Wikipedia just to satisfy some wild and idiosynchratic semantic hair. It is of no value to Wikipedia. William R. Buckley 07:28, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

My primary point has been and will continue to be: A) The term "artificial life" is best applied towards the field, not the organism. B) The two are sufficiently distinct to warrant seperate articles. There are usages of the word to apply towards synthetically created life, but they are not in any way cannon or common compared with its use for the field. We could rename synthetic life to artificial life (class of life) or something equally wordy, but that just seems to be overly verbose. Synthetic life seems the simplest, distinctess way of distinguishing the two ideas from each other. Synthetic and Artificial don't even have any differences in connotation, so it's not like by calling it synthetic life instead of artificial life I'm degrading it. With a disambiguation link at the top of the alife article, this should really be all you need. --Numsgil 05:52, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

From the journal Artificial Life: "By extending the horizons of empirical research in biology beyond the territory currently circumscribed by life-as-we-know-it, the study of artificial life gives us access to the domain of life-as-it-could-be." Let's parse that. "the study of artificial life" cannot mean "the study of the discipline of manufacturing life". That would be a meta-study, a sub-section of the philosophy of science. Paul Beardsell 21:41, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

The "study of" prefix is redundant, as in "the study of biology" or "the field of physics". If anything, the quote proves my point since it calls the object of study "life-as-it-could-be" instead of "artificial life". --Numsgil 04:32, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Let's examine some dictionaries:

dictionary.com: artificial life –noun: the simulation of any aspect of life, as through computers, robotics, or biochemistry.
American Heritage Dictionary - artificial life n. The simulation of biological phenomena through the use of computer models, robotics, or biochemistry. Also called Alife.

Note that artificial life is defined as being the simulations themselves, not the study of the simulations, not the creation of them. Paul Beardsell 21:41, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Simulating somethings is the same as studying something. The simulation is the final product of a theory going from conception to proof. Note that these articles do not say "artificial life n. Life created through artificial means". Again, these would seem to prove my point instead of yours. --Numsgil 04:32, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

"Simulating something is the same as studying something." Not it is not! Citation required. Paul Beardsell 06:10, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

"The simulation is the final product of a theory going from conception to proof." No it is not! Citation required. Paul Beardsell 06:10, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

"The simulation of" is not the "act of creating a simulation" - it is the simulation itself. Paul Beardsell 06:10, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

This is getting tiring. I won't argue semantics like this. Scientific modelling is the cornerstone of alife research, and I won't spend the time to argue wether or not modelling something is the same as studying it. It's a word game, and ultimately it doesn't matter. I'm sorry you disagree with the current label alife has. You don't get to change it. It doesn't matter if you're right or not, you don't get to change it. It's not for you to change. It's not for me to change. ALife existed (though perhaps not named as such) before I did, and probably before you did. Feel free to write another article, and we can add a disambiguation link. Perhaps Ersatz life or Artificially created life or Synthetic life (my preferance). The compound word "artificial life" is taken, and applies to a field of study that studies evolution and life through the use of human artifacts. This is true wether you want it to be or not. --Numsgil 08:35, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Semantics is important in an encyclopedia. We cannot afford to be sloppy like this. The issue is this: What will readers of WP expect when they see an article entitled "Artificial Life". An article that doesn't discuss anything which is or could be artificially alive? No. Paul Beardsell 09:29, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

That depends on why you're looking at the article on Artificial life. If you're coming here from Darwinbots or Avida, a discussion of Frankenstein isn't going to be appreciated. Again, my creation and disambiguation link to synthetic life should meet all the issues you're after. --Numsgil 09:37, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

My remaining issue is that the definitions seem to be yours alone. We aren't supposed to make it up as we go along here at WP. Paul Beardsell 21:14, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I have had exactly this same issue at artificial intelligence. There, too, the topic was defined as being "the study of ...". An example I used there was, what is meant when one says, as is often said, that "artificial intelligence is impossible"? What is held to be impossible is not "the study" but "artificial / synthesized / manufactured intelligence" itself. Similarly, here, what is meant when one says, as is often said, that "artificial life is impossible"? (Incidentally, my argument was accepted at artificial intelligence.) Paul Beardsell 21:14, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What "artificial life" is

Let's have another go and a fresh start. I quote the first sentence of Mathematics. "Mathematics ... is the body of knowledge centered on concepts such as quantity, structure, space, and change, and also the academic discipline which studies them." I suggest, in similar vein to the Mathematics article, and weakening my position expressed above in an effort to find a compromise, that this article should be both about artifical life and the study of artificial life. Paul Beardsell 06:20, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

While I appreciate efforts to compromise, I will not compromise on this, and will fight any efforts to encorporate the two in the same article to my dying breath. They are not related except by the most cursory overlap in the labels we might apply to them. What you call "artificial life" would include things like androids, cyborgs, genetically modified bacteria, and concious AI. It would involve discussing their use in fiction, possible political issues, etc. This is not what this article is about. I would not try to discuss Adolf Lu Hitler Marak in the article Hitler (though the reverse might not be true), even though they have the same name. Again, feel free to right another article, we'll add a disambiguation link. But this isn't the article to discuss these issues. --Numsgil 08:35, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I think any hope you have of persuading others of the correctness of your view is ruined by overstatement. By Godwin's law you lose the argument but that law need not be invoked: Your two Hitlers really are unrelated but to claim that X and The Study Of X are unrelated is gobsmackingly outrageous! Paul Beardsell 09:04, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Hitler was probably a poor example, it was just the first article that sprang into my mind that would probably have a disambiguation page. You can exchange links to Hitler to links to anything with a disambiguation page if you like.

At present, artificial life is not the study of synthetic life. Artificial life is the study of life in the abstract, and its evolution through natural selection or other means. Supposing for a moment that artificial life did study synthetic life, it would be concerned with synthetic life's evolution through time. This is why the two don't belong on the same page. Artificial life concerns itself with agents and digital organisms or even synthetic life only in so far as they are necessary to study evolution. --Numsgil 09:13, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I suppose then that one can DO 'artificial life' in the same sence as one can do mathematics, but one cannot create 'artificial life' just as one cannot create mathematics? It might be so, but it just seems a bit counter intuitive. --moxon 10:45, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Whether mathematics is created or discovered has not yet been resolved to anything approaching a consensus. But we all know what is meant by "mathematics" in the preceding sentence. Similarly we know what is meant by the phrase "creating artificial life" - we are not referring to the creation of "the study of artificial life", but of the little beasties themselves. Paul Beardsell 06:08, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Link to artificial consciousness

The article now contains, in a comment, an argument as to why there should be no link to artificial consciousness. The opinion that artificial consciousness is not readily attainable or achievable and therefore is not worthwhile linking to (I paraphrase the argument) is an opinion held by some but by no means all of those prominent in the field. Artificial consciousness is considered practically inevitable by those who hold the strong AI hypothesis. They hold the view that artificial consciousness will be real consciousness just as artificial intelligence will be real intelligence and, as expressed by others above (including he who does not want a link to AC), just as artificial life will be real life. Paul Beardsell 06:48, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

The comment is mine, artificial conciousness is in the realm of AI, not ALife. The old article linked to it and its brethren, and that was the reason it was so terrible. AC comes from the top down, while ALife comes from the bottom up. AC has absolutely nothing to do with modern ALife research. Things such as the Cambrian explosion, the advent of sex, altruism, and the baldwin effect are the current focus of Alife research. AC has nothing to do with ALife, except as perhaps an extremely long distant goal for some participants in ALife. I feel that the current link to AI fulfills any needs for links to AC. --Numsgil 08:35, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

The WP NPOV policy demands that all mainstream opinions are reflected. Numsgil's insistence on one POV to the exclusion of others obviously denies other mainstream POVs exposure on WP. Paul Beardsell 09:53, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

What specific POV within the ALife community am I excluding? AC isn't an POV within the ALife community (though some overlap of participants might exist). --Numsgil 09:58, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I removed Numsgil's comment. I'm reposting it here: User:150.176.202.5

No link to Artificial Consciousness on purpose. At the present, Artificial Consciousness is a pipe dream, a metaphysical field, and is only extremely loosely related to the current methodolgies and realities of ALife. That is, Alife first needs to achieve and is working towards proper "life" of comparable complexity to a bacteria. It is not yet ready to or working towards something that is sapient. That is the realm of AI.

Any particular reason why the removal of my comment requires reinserting a link to artificial consciousness? Since you're the original contributor of the link, what made you feel it (and the comment you placed with it) should belong on the page? --Numsgil 11:46, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Again, the only way the two are related is through their relation with Artificial Intelligence. I just don't feel that artificial consciousness has anything to do with artificial life (though it has alot to do with synthetic life). --Numsgil 11:46, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

This seems profoundly wrong to me. Artificial consciousness is surely a subset of artificial life? Paul Beardsell 21:02, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

My argument is that artificial conciousness is not artificial life. The assertion that being alive does not connote conciousness is my axiom. William R. Buckley 18:08, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I am without doubt wrong here. I agree: Alive things are not necessarily conscious and v.v. Paul Beardsell 20:51, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Artificial life meaning synthetic life, yes. Artificial life meaning a field of study, no. There have been no published studies that I'm aware in any alife journals that even broach the subject. --Numsgil 05:20, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Synthetic life

--Numsgil 22:54, 11 January 2007 (UTC) I've set up an article synthetic life which I'm currently in the process of adding a disambiguation link to. Issues relating to artificially created life forms should go in that article. That should prevent the mixing of purpose that discussing both issues in the same article causes. --Numsgil 08:59, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

A reference in the literature showing that in the field itself the term artificial life refers only to the study of artificial life [forms] and that the term used for artificial life [forms] is invariably synthetic life would usefully support your view and also shut me up. Otherwise we are inventing terminology and usage and this would constitute a [mild form of] original research which, as I am sure you know, is forbidden at WP. Paul Beardsell 21:19, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Come on Paul, inventing a name for an article is not original research. Save the hyperbole. Any faux pas in using a name contrary to that in research is easily adjusted in later editions of Wikipedia. Until such research usage is established, there is little harm from Wikipedia using a term internally. Coining of article names is hardly a profound issue.

Come on William, I wrote "a [mild form of] original research. But the coining of article names DOES MATTER. A lot. Giving something a new name, here at WP, is not allowed. For good reason. Paul Beardsell 23:13, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

As I pointed out in an edit a few minutes ago, I do not agree with the context switch inherent in the name change, from artificial to synthetic. So, Numsgil should consider carefully a renaming of his article, to say, 'Artificial life examples.' Use of the term 'digital organism' is discouraged, as then the article would seem an awkward place to explore examples of wet alife. William R. Buckley 07:34, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Before I begin, I admit only to inventing the term "synthetic life" (although I doubt I'm the first to use it). I think it's the best choice, and is an equally valid way to describe artificially created life as artificial life is. If there's a better location to write that article, then we can move to it, but it seems the most appropriate to me.

With that out of the way, here is a (hopefully) comprehensive list (not in any real order) of all reasons why synthetic life and artificial life should be discussed in seperate articles, with the present alife article keeping the namesake "artificial life":

1. Artificial life (the field) existed in the present article's location, so it has seniority.

2. Artificial life has a category named after it. The contents of this category reflect primarily alife the field.

3. A google search for "artificial life" returns links to artificial life the field exclusively for the first several pages at least (I never managed to find a page that wasn't about the field). Thus the term when applied to a field instead of synthetic life is far, far, more common.

4. Assuming for a moment that we could say that artificial life the field studies artificial life (synthetic life), we would also have to assume then a strong ALife position (that is, that the object of study is alive). Using this definition makes a weak alife position make little sense, and would seem to add bias to the field on this core philosophical issue. Hence why the usual term is digital organism.

5. Given 4 above as a partial support, I would say (and other alife participants should chime in) that artificial life is the study of life and evolution in the abstract. To back up this claim, I cite [1] and [2], the latter is written by Christopher Langston who coined the term to describe the field in the first place, so it's as definitive a source as any I can think of or find. Specifically notice that this definition neatly side steps the issue of wether the simulated agents are "alive" or not. In reality, artificial life is not the study of synthetic life, but the study of life processes and properties abstracted away from any single medium. Thus trying to say that artificial life studies synthetic life misses the point entirely.

6. The field is called artificial life by all those organizations and participants that form(ed) the core of the field. It should be fairly easy to agree that the field's proper name is artificial life.

7. Assuming for a moment that alife the field does study artificial (synthetic) life, we would still be well behooved to discuss the two in seperate articles anyway, so we can seperate data about the history of the field, its current direction, etc. in one article and the sorts of "artificial life" forms that exist, their potential political rights, etc. in another article.

--Numsgil 05:12, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Responding to RFC

I know it is not usual to insert new comment at the top. But I started the original discussion off, see above sections on what artificial life is and is not. I said the article should be about artificial life, the beasties. Another said very vociferously "no," (I paraphrase), "over my dead body: 'Artificial life' is not about the life forms, it is the academic discipline of creating synthetic life." This discussion then decayed (in my view) into a discussion about what the study of artificial life is all about. Agreement could not be reached and the RFC process was started. OK. But the bigger argument, should the article artificial life (also) be about the life forms themselves, is being neglected. Paul Beardsell 02:19, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

No, my position is not as you present it. Artificial life the field of study DOES NOT study artificial life forms. Supposing you took the strong ALife position, you could say that the agents that alife the field studies are artificial life forms, but that doesn't mean that all or even most of the imaginable synthetic life is studied by artificial life the field. Also, alife the field studies phenomenon that are not alive, no matter how you define life. Things such as genetic algorithms and artificial chemistries are not "alive", or even claimed to be alive.

The word "artificial life" is just an arbitrary (but well documented and concrete) title applied to a field that studies iterative population dynamics, complexity, evolution, natural selection, multiple agent game theory, and a host of other related topics. It could be called "Purple Elephant", that doesn't mean the field is about purple elephants or even that it studies purple elephants. I'd prefer not to speak for Langston, but I suppose he chose the name to highlight the highly computational nature of the field (artificial) and to find a title that would be a little sensational and produce some much needed press exposure. As Langston himself has said, artificial life the field seeks to explore and understand life in its abstract. It's goal is not to create artificial life forms. It's goal is not to study artificial life forms (which may or may not exist, depending on your definition). It's goal is to understand the sometimes hidden workings of life in all forms, and life related processes.

In short, the two uses of the term can overlap slightly, depending on wether you have a strong or weak alife position, but there is far more that doesn't overlap in both uses of the term that discussing them in the same article, on equal footing, makes about as much sense as combining the articles on biology and physics because of the small amount of overlap they have. --Numsgil 05:26, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Your argument seems to hinge on the fact(?) that artificial life (forms) do not yet exist. The Wright brothers were studying flight before they had something which flew. They were studying systems and mechanisms to allow man-made flight, eventually. You, were you working in that field back then, would deny that you were working towards a flying machine. You would say "man-made flight" is the "study of man-made flight" because "man-made flight" does not exist. I doubt you like the analogy as it is so telling. So, once again, I ask, what is meant by the question: "Is artificial life possible?" Paul Beardsell 07:30, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

No, Paul, his argument does not hinge upon an agreement that alife forms do not exist (are not alive). His argument hinges rather upon the old saw, "A rose by any other name would ..." still be a rose. With, that is, one caveat. Names do not necessarily imply meaning, though they often do. Assuming a meaning for a name is a bad idea. Alife does seek to understand the workings of all life, even that biological but, with a goal of creating a lifeform that is different from those found in biology, whatever its substrate. It is patently wrong to say that the field of alife does not have as a goal the creation of an artificial lifeform. Indeed, this is clearly the goal of the wet alife community, and those on the computational side, like Tom Ray. Heck, Tom has already claimed the existence of living entities within Tierra. I will agree with Tom, (at least abstractly, since I do not well understand Tierra, and therefore cannot comment on the quality of his claim), since I would argue that any robot that can self-replicate is nominally alive. William R. Buckley 18:05, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

In answer to your question, Is artificial life possible?, is a resounding yes. And, Jay, you cannot ignore this point. Humanity, at some point, will collectively agree that artificial lifeforms (life based upon other than the substrate used for aboriginal terrestrial life) do exist, and this will be because we live with them, just as we now live with dogs, cats, birds, snakes, and the like. William R. Buckley 18:05, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

There are two issues here. Is life outside our carbon terrestrial mindset possible, and can we make it? I would say the first is probably pretty well accepted. I'd say the latter is more questionable. Certainly some day someone will be able to make a bacteria or higher from scratch. There's already work being done on resurecting viruses that are dormant in our genetic code. But can we make life that is fundamentally alien to our carbon based reference? What's really questionable here is wether digital organisms can ever be alive. It is entirely feasible that life is an NP complete problem. Think of the inherant parallel nature in all aspects of life, from protein folding, to DNA transcribing, to the interaction of our organs. What's to stop life from being at least as hard as the travelling salesman problem? And, like the travelling salesperson problem, what's to stop near optimal heuristics from arriving pretty close to the mark? Maybe ersatz life is all that is within our reach, but what's to stop that from being meaningful or useful? Then again, maybe life isn't as complicated as we make it. The point is, we don't know, and shouldn't make factual claims about it. And, as I describe elsewhere in this same post, life is an arbitrary and subjective term that we apply to things. How can we make claims about what is possible or even presently exists when we don't even really understand or agree upon a basic definition for life? Heck, we don't even know what life really is. --Numsgil 06:00, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Jay, I want to tie ideas down here, so, please, play along. I need a yes or no answer to these two questions: (i) Do you, Jay Lemmon, agree that life of substrate other than that represented upon Earth is possible? and (ii) Do you, Jay Lemmon, believe that life construction, the ability to construct a living form, is beyond human capacity? William R. Buckley 21:09, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

My answer to the two questions is yes, and no, respectively, were they posed with my name replacing that of Jay Lemmon. I would further assert that answering yes to the second question exposes a predisposition to vitalist notions. William R. Buckley 21:09, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

You can talk about how hard the problem is, and about how little we know but, if you presume failure upon a premanent lack of understanding, you miss the point of life: opportunity presages consumption. Heck, we might even, in our frenzy of human folly, stumble upon and create life, quite without notice, initially. That the term life is subjective is acknowledged. William R. Buckley 21:09, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

To the first, I would say "probably". I know that's not a yes or no answer, but in my experience real life is so seldom black and white like that. Most modern definitions of life preclude something like most of the imaginable forms of life. So if we encounter, say, ammonia seas teaming with self propogating clumps of pure silicon, do we change our definition of life, or invent a new definition? What if the clumps don't propogate themselves, but are created due to an interaction between volcanoes and the planet's ionosphere? What if the clumps are sentient, and we manage to communicate? What if they don't die, but are budded and reabsorbed from a large, central mass? What if they're byproducts of another sentient race's waste interacting with the seas? Is it alive? For every definition of life I've found, you could take one of the requirements, flip it on its ear, and still have something that might be called alive. So much depends on wether we take "life" to be a specific title for the phenomenon on Earth, or a more general term used to describe something we have a hard time defining. So far, there haven't been any examples of life that strain what we expect, so there's no way to tell if we would expand the term "life" or place it as a subclass of a larger word. I would imagine we would expand the term "life", but so much depends on the current culture when such new "life" is found.

To the second, I would say "unlikely, though possible". I consider it extremely likely that man will eventually master nanotechnology to the point of being able to replicate a bacteria from raw materials. But will our chemical or computational skill ever become so great that we can craft something that is "alive" in a medium fundamentally alien to our biological past,? Would we ever know enough chemistry to craft one of the theoretical silicon blobs I described above? Biochemistry is such a huge field. Imagine trying to build its analog on another substrate, without the example that life provides to biochemistry. In silico, things also get a little dicey. Suppose we could scan and perfectly simulate a micro droplet of water with some algae, bacteria, viruses, etc. in it. Would we have created life? Is this life in a different medium from our own, or not? What if we craft something that "lives" as an application on our desktops? We already have TSRs, are they alive? Again, our very definition of life would either need to be expanded, or a new term devised, of which life is a subset. As it stands, life outside of our biocarbon framework is impossible by definition. --Numsgil 03:33, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Our ability to define is limited, no? That is why we will come to call it life. William R. Buckley 17:45, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how you can say that my position hinges on wether or not artificial life forms exist. I only ever broach that idea at the top of my first paragraph, and my point was to use it to play devil's advocate. It's by no means the central idea to my argument. Quite the contrary, my point would stand firm if the little digital organisms alife studies use were considered alive. I have the sneaking suspicion that you may not be fully reading my posts, which would explain alot. ;)

My argument is that the two ideas are more dissimilar than similar. As to your analogy, I think a more proper metaphor would be to call what the Wrights' studied "fluid dynamics", and their goal "powered flight". Fluid dynamics does not have the goal of powered flight. Fluid dynamics is simply a field of study which allows the curious to understand the way that fluids move, act, and react in flows. The goal of powered flight does overlap with certain areas of fluid dynamics. They had to do experiments with airfoils, for instance. But they weren't interested in, say, low reynolds flows, so not all of fluid dynamics interested them. By the same token, they had to do engineering work to find the proper materials to use that were strong enough to carry a man and an combustion engine, but light enough to get off the ground. That sort of engineering work doesn't fall within the realm of fluid dynamics. Do you see how the two ideas, fluid dynamics and powered flight, relate? Now imagine the confusion if they were both called the same thing.

Yes, Jay, the notions are different. Yet, differences do not motivations make. William R. Buckley 18:13, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

It might be that one day, the techniques pioneered in artificial life allow for the creation of a synthetic life form. You should not take that to mean that synthetic life is the "goal" of Artificial Life. Artificial Life's only "goal" is to understand the natural processes of evolution, natural selection, complexity, and chaos in biological and sometimes non biological settings. The question of wether synthetic life exists, can exist, or has existed is entirely moot (except as a way to understand the motivations of alife researchers). On the other side, not everything that might be considered a synthetic life form falls within the realm of what artificial life might study. As I've pointed out before, something like HAL from 2001: A space odyssey might be considered alive, but it by no means falls within the realm of Alife research. It's very cleanly within the lines for AI research.

Again, yes Jay, do not confuse the development of method with its application. I quite agree but, this does not extend to justify your argument of the unimportance of goal to the field. It is a necessary point that only when one actually has an artificial life form may one then directly address the primary motivation for the establishment of the field - a lack of alternative lifeforms against which to compare biological life. If you do not have a specific example that is alive, then you have not satisfied this motivation. Of this reason, not only is the creation of an artificial lifeform a goal of the field, it is a requirement. William R. Buckley 18:13, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Certainly creating artificial life forms is the goal of some researchers, but it should be pretty clear that that isn't the focus of the scholarly work done. If you ask an alife researcher what they're doing, they may say "synthesizing life", but that doesn't mean that they're going to call it that when they publish. I've done a significant amount of reading in the ALife proceedings over the last two years or so, and there just aren't that many articles that discuss wether or not digital organisms are alive, or what they would need to have to be considered alive. The closest thing I remember reading is a critique of Robert Rosen's central theorem. That's it. The reason for the dearth of articles on this should be fairly clear: life is a subjective title we apply to certain phenomena, and it doesn't hold any scientific value beyond what we place on it. It is not a quantitative term. We cannot examine something and say it is "30% alive" or has "10 life units" of life in it. The reason its rarely discussed in alife proceedings is because its a potentially loaded topic with poorly defined definitions, exactly the sort of thing that makes for poor science. And exactly the sort of thing that makes for great philosophical arguments.

You presume the justification of your argument. The reason may not be so clear as you think: the problem is very hard, and only rarely do we get much improvement. We have a long way to go. The mere existence of a paper to address the topic of "what is life?" counters your argument. The topic is discussed in the field literature. It just isn't the most common topic, because it is hard, and not because it is unimportant to the field. William R. Buckley 21:09, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

"What is life?" and related questions are metaphysics and philosophy. The field of Artificial Life does not concern itself with philosophy, even if the researchers and proponents of artificial life do. This is the central point I'm trying to make. Artificial Life is something between a science and an art, but the central tenant is the physically tangible. You can see it, run it in your computer, make it in a lab, taste it, touch it, or otherwise manipulate it. It exists in some form as a physical entity. There are quantitative results that you can measure and record. There are qualitative macroscopic phenomenon you can comment on. It has a very clear grounding in a very pedestrian reality. A sort of WYSIWYG mindset. W(h)ether it's "alive" or not in no way changes the validity of the study. W(h)ether synthetic life is even possible at all or not in no[w] way changes the validity of the study. It only colors our understanding of the result. Artificial Life neatly sidesteps the whole issue, because it isn't a productive course of study.

The issue is not addressed today, because it is not today productive. This is not to say that the issue is not important to the field. You can't have it both ways, a field that is not concerned with whether something is alive or not, and a field that is intended to address the shortcomings of having only biological examples to study which all agree are alive, however ill formed and inaccurate the definition. You must address this disparity in your argument. William R. Buckley 21:09, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Looking back, I would agree that sying that the question of what is alive "does not interest Artificial Life" is probably hyperbole. However, if there are articles on the philosophy of life, they are the "human interest" of the journal articles. Primarily, I do not see this question as being central to the field as it exists at this moment in time, again because it's not a scientific question. Part of the question here is wether an article on Artificial Life needs to cover what the field would like itself to be, or what the field is at this moment in time. I would say primarily the latter, though the former can (and should) certainly be discussed. --Numsgil 03:33, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Good. Next time, don't go so far with your position. It has great value but, only when tempered. Reasonable is discussing the field as it now is. Unreasonable is intimating that the field will forever remain as it is. There must be enough flexibility in your arguments to account for opportunities. Cover the field as it is but, leave room that the readers view of the topic discussed is also open to the vistas of opportunity. William R. Buckley 07:50, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Now, get on with the revision. Paul, FT2, what are your objections? William R. Buckley 07:50, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

An example: New Scientist magazine, a respected magazine about science for the interested and educated general public, is written by journalists, not by scientists. It is doubtless frustrating for the experts in the field covered in a New Scientist article to read the simplifications, and the glossing over of detail, in the article. But remember who the audience is! That is what is being forgotten here. Neither WP nor any other encyclopedia is supposed to be a set of articles reflecting precisely the detailed minutiae of every discipline. Think! What is it that interested members of the general public will be wanting to know when they look up artificial life here? That is what must appear first in this article. My primary objection has been the hijacking of the WP namespace element "artificial life" to mean only "Artificial Life" [caps?], the (supposed) name of an academic field of study nothing to do with "artificial life" [lowercase?], the English phrase meaning "life which is an artifact, which is manufactured, which is not naturally occurring". I am not persuaded by the arguments denying the common usage here, when I follow them (and I'm not dumb) I think they're specious and excluding. Neither the arguments nor this article is in the spirit of an encyclopedia. WP is not paper, there is lots of space to get into detailed documentation of all the research techniques of the discipline, but FIRST remember the audience. Paul Beardsell 10:44, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

We have a namespace problem: If we are forced to accept the risible proposition insisted on by some here that discipline of "Artificial Life" is not "the study of (or towards) artificial life" then THIS SOLVES NOTHING: We then have an even more serious disambiguation issue than we would have otherwise. The article artificial life must be nothing more than a disambiguation page. That the WP namespace element Artificial Life can be reserved for a description of something that is unrelated to "artificial life (forms)" and that these are given the artificial dreamt-up here-only name of synthetic life, simply to resolve a namespace problem, is a nonsense. The solution is that this article artificial life becomes a short disambiguation page where we explain that alife is nothing to do with artificial life (forms) (as if!), and we link to each of them under those names. Paul Beardsell 10:44, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

So, your hangup is nothing more than namespace. Fine, have two articles, case matters, to disambiguate the topics; (i) Artificial Life the field; and (ii) artificial life, the category. Let each reference the other at the very top of the page, in order that the user be able to correct any misunderstanding in name. Or, am I naïve respecting Wikipedia and case sensitivity? William R. Buckley 17:45, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately the WP software is not happy coping with distinguishing between Artificial life, artificial life and Artificial Life - it always capitalises the initial letter of an article; it will flip the initial case of other words to find a match. The reason it is not good at this is, I guess, because people are not either and the WP s/w is trying to cope with out foibles. So, having two articles artificial life (which automatically would become Artificial life anyway) and Artificial Life will not work either in the s/w or in the heads of WP's users. I suggest three articles: Artificial life - a short disambiguation page referencing two other articles, Artificial life (forms) and Alife (or, if you prefer, Artifical Life (field of study)). Each should reference the other at the top, as you suggest. Paul Beardsell 18:51, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Again, the policy to use is Wikipedia:Disambiguation. There are two ways to disambiguate. You can either place "did you mean X" tags at the top of articles, or use a disambiguation page that links to other pages. There aren't clear guidelines on which to use when, but I would suggest the former if there are only 2 or 3 pages to disambiguate, and the latter when there's more. So I think the page top disambiguation link is the way to go.

The question is then how to name the articles. After reading the disambiguation page, I think life (artificial) for artificial life forms would be the best choice. It emphasizes the fact that it's "life" (or would be if it exists, depending on your position), doesn't conflict with Artificial Life, and doesn't use "new" terms like synthetic life does. The only possible argument against this I can imagine is if you feel it is unfair for Artificial Life to get the article space artificial life. To this, I would claim, again, that I can show conclusively that it is the more common usage of the term, by a great margin. What dictionaries have definitions for Artificial Life define it for the field. Google searches for the term artificial life reveal only uses for the field for the first several pages. When a lay person types in "artificial life" in the Wikipedia search box, it's probably because they read an article in Discover on Avida, or watched a television program. Certainly I approached artificial life from this direction before I became involved at all. To be honest, I didn't even realize there were two terms vying for control of the article until this discussion with Paul started. --Numsgil 04:58, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Fine, we all agree on disambiguation, and to choose between a separate page, or starting with a top level pointing to derivatives. The question is which is best. I vote for determining case count, and then basing the decision on the measure. The greater the count, the better the separate page. As for article name assignment, I believe that the name should go to the field, and not just because I am in the field (however nominally). The reason is that the artificial lifeforms are subject matter of the field. There is a natural progression. A pointer at the top of the field article to the lifeforms page should immediately present. I am not so in favor of "synthetic life" though the term is also not abhorant; neither "artificial lifeforms" nor "artificial life forms" are elegant, and "synthetic life" approaches elegance. My preference, as earlier stated, is to use case to distinguish between formal name (field) and colloquial name (subject matter). In all of this, it is certain that we should put our decision into formal and concrete terms. We have not heard from FT2. You have my position, and Numsgil's, and debating the point is still open, so let us have yours. William R. Buckley 19:21, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

An article on artificial life forms, on the other hand, needs to delve into the intangible. Into the ambiguity of definition, the arbitrariness of labels, and the related issues of human perception and egotism. It needs to link to articles on artificial consciousness, Frankenstein, morality, Creationism, and other literary, philosophical, and religous articles. The two ideas deserve seperate articles. --Numsgil 06:00, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

On this point, I will agree. There does need to be a separation article-wise between discussion of the field and discussion of the subject matter of the field, and perhaps a few other levels of break-down. I might want to limit some of the outside, extra-science connections, at least directly, but see the utility of the partition you promote. William R. Buckley 21:09, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I hope I've been clear this time. ;) --Numsgil 13:36, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Nice touch, however coincidental, the way one explanation feeds into the comment of another. My complements. William R. Buckley 21:09, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

The essence here is we have a term, "Artificial life", that has multiple uses. In this case, it is used by at least two areas of study:

People who seek to explore the creation of artificial life, or life-forms, which presumably may be either biological or based upon artificial intelligence depending on the research speciality.
People who seek to model existing life and understand how it works and develops, by creating artificial analogs of it, and examining their development, evolution, and behavior.

Both of these subjects have a legitimate basis for using the term "artificial life", and both have followings and interested parties who use the term "artificial life" for ttheir specific choice of one or the other. (A Wikipedia category Category:Artificial life has also been set up but as that is an encyclopedia construct, the fact of its creation and population to date hasn't got much bearing on how the two subjects should be presented and described.)

In the usual course of events, two policies or practices inform and guide these kind of situations, and I think similar handling might therefore also help sort this debate out too. The relevant policies are use of disambiguation for words covering multiple subjects, and use of Wikipedia:Summary style and splitting out of significant self-contained subjects into their own appropriately named pages.

Two sets of users of the term "AL" are presently somewhat vying for their preferred usage to be associated with that subject. I don't think that helps Wikipedia at all. What a user expects to see on reading an article about "Artificial life", is an overview of exactly that - artificial life. It would be an overview article that describes all aspects of the AL subject, including topics such as the historical interest in developing AL, types of AL, uses of AL, concerns over AL, AL in fiction -- and also the use of AL to model real living processes, and the development of biological and computerized AL -- with summary style links in each section to point to the relevant main articles. Both of the articles presently discussed are really subtopics within the broader field of "artificial life" overall. They are subtypes or specialist subareas in AL. The problem is not "which of these should be called artificial life on Wikipedia". The problem is that there needs to be one umbrella article on AL, and then these two articles both need to be linked from it as specialist aspects to that field. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 17:33, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

You are slightly confused. The two ideas are vying for the same word, yes, but they are only cursorly related. This isn't a case that can be solved by splitting out. Consider the case of apple and Apple Inc.. Clearly splitting out doesn't apply to these two articles. Splitting out certainly applies to the case of wet alife and the main alife page, but not to the case of synthetic life and artificial life. For this, Wikipedia:Disambiguation is the proper policy to use. The question should be wether we make alife a disambiguation page or just include redirects at the top of the article. I would argue for redirects, for the simple reason that, as any google search will tell you, the term "Artificial Life" applies specifically to alife studies in silico far, far, far more often that it applies to either wet alife or artificially created life forms. Certainly wikipedia should bow to the strongly more common usage.

Again, synthetic life might not be the best article title. I'm more than happy to support changing it to whatever people feel is the better choice, but I strongly think that artificial life should point to artificial life studies in general, and in silico specifically, due to the overwhelming usage of the term to describe it. --Numsgil 22:54, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I believe FT2 gets this wrong and Numsgil ignores the real question here. The debate is not about "artificial life" referring to which of two slightly different dields of study. The debate is about "artificial life" referring to:

Field(s) of study about artificial life.
Artificial life (forms).

The term refers to both of these. On this page most (all?) contributors have used the term in both senses, even those who have argued it refers only to (the) field(s) of study.

Do you mean this page, the talk page, or this page, the main article? The main article, in my view at least, uses the term explicitly to refer to the field of study. --Numsgil 05:26, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes! But that is because, on that page, _YOU_ refuse to allow any other usage than that. So the above para is nothing but a circular argument. You beg the question. Paul Beardsell 09:50, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

It's not meant as an argument, it's meant as a clarification. If you mean the talk page (you still don't say explicitly, but I'm assuming this is what you mean), my personal usage of the term to refer to synthetic life is meant as something between ironic usage and meeting you half way. Certainly the term can be applied to synthetic life, but its usage in that manner is comparitively rare in common parlance. I can show you this is true by again citing google search results. In addition, dictionary.com only provides definitions for the field of artificial life, none of the definitions means artificially created life forms. Because mutual use leads to confusion, and the term is far more common when applied to the field, it makes sense to me at least that we find another term for the idea of synthetically created life. Synthetic life has no other connotations from artificial life, the life form. Another possible title for an article on synthetic life could be life (artificial). --Numsgil 13:36, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

What is meant by the most important question asked by those involved in artificial life: "Is artificial life possible?" In the 1st use of artificial life in this para we mean the study of. The the second use we mean the beasties themselves.

This is not the "most important" question, unless you're applying your own sense of importance. Certainly the question of the status of digital organisms as being alive or not is asked, but it is hardly the central focus of research. --Numsgil 05:26, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

It is this absolutely proper use, the use of "artificial life" to refer to life forms, which is being suppressed here.

It may be a "proper" use, but it is the lesser common use, by a great margin. Again, a google search will tell you this. --Numsgil 05:26, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Paul Beardsell 23:21, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think we're a million miles apart in interpretation. We seem to both be saying the same thing: people of the lay-public who click on an article about "Artificial life" will probably want to read about artificial life overall, including AL in the sense of "life forms" -- which isn't fully represented right now. For a term like AL which is so broad, it probably needs an overview article to cover all aspects of AL, and at present this article doesn't do that, it overlooks some aspects in an imbalanced way, which is a problem. Is there not a general "overview" article on artificial life? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 00:03, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think that that is the way forward. Artificial life would be an overview article, explaining relatively briefly the sub-topics (no more than a paragraph or two on each) and linking to each of them. Artificial life (the study of) and Artificial life (forms) OR ANY OTHER SENSIBLE BREAKDOWN. Paul Beardsell 02:11, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I was having a similar thought, so I'd support that (or something similar) as a resolution. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 15:34, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Summary of my argument: "X" is not "the study of X". When people say "X" but mean "the study of X" then this will be clear from context. To avoid saying "the study of X", or "the accumulated body of knowledge about X", or, equivalently, "the science of X", people will start to say "X", on its own, to be shorthand for "the study of X". But "X" never becomes "the study of X". It doesn't matter how big an expert anyone is in (the study of) X or how many X's one has in one's garage, neither gives anyone a privileged position in this argument. This is a question of language and also one of philosophy and logic: If "X" means "the study of X" then what does "the study of X" mean other than the infinite regress "the study of the study of the study of ... X". But, for shorthand purposes, sometimes or even often people will say "X" when they mean "the study of X". An article on "X" should also be about "X", not just "the study of X". Paul Beardsell 02:42, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Artificial life is not the study of artificial life, even though it (might) (arguably) study artificial life at times. --Numsgil 05:26, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Ha! Parsing: The 1st instance of "artificial life" in the above para might refer to the academic pursuit called artificial life, which is not (we are told), 2nd instance, the activity of examining either the academic pursuit or the little beasties themselves, context does not allow the meaning to be determined, whereas the 3rd instance seems to refer to the actual thing, artificial life, itself. This confusion is created by you alone. Whatever, you do not address the logical argument I present. You simply repeat the error to good effect reinforcing precisely my point. Paul Beardsell 07:23, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I use "artificial life" for both life (artificial) and artificial life (field of study) exactly to point out what you have just done. There is potential confusion if you use the same term for both ideas. Which is a strong reason in and of itself not to mix them in the same article. To rephrase: Artificial life is not the study of synthetic life, even though it (might) (arguably) study synthetic life forms. --Numsgil 13:36, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I support what I understand as the sense of PB's comment: that the two topics are related, and are treated here in a reasonable way. The place to talk about various forms of artifical life is in articles devoted to those specific forms. The only thing I would change is to reword to require the less frequent use of the term alife, which does not seem to be used except among the active proponents of this speciality. DGG 04:55, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] RFC continued

New section because the structure of the above is getting far too complex and, I think we all agree, some or most of it is not relevant to the issue which all now (seem) to agree is one of WP namespace usage.

Summary of current position:

My proposal is one short disambiguation page entitled artificial life with a link to Alife [or Artificial Life (field of study) or whatever you like] and another link to Artificial life (forms) [or whatever]. I justify this on the basis that the (above) average WP reader will be expecting (first) to see a discussion on "artificial life (itself)" rather than a description of research techniques used by those involved in "Artificial Life (the study of)".

Numsgil and William favour a proposal that is essentially the status quo. Artificial life will continue to be a large article about "the study of artificial life". The subject of "artificial life itself" will be relegated to an article with some name other than artificial life. There will be an italicised intro sentence at artificial life which, if I get to write it, will say: Those who are interested in reading about "artificial life" (i.e. life which does not occur naturally) are likely to be disappointed and puzzled by this article. They are referred to Life (artificial).

Paul Beardsell 23:20, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

BTW, what are your thoughts about life (artificial) instead of the other possibilities? --Numsgil 04:22, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

What I object to is artificial life being a seemingly comprehensive article NOT about artificial life itself. Especially if (but not only if) "the study of artificial life" is continued to be claimed NOT to be the study of/towards artificial life itself. If such nonsense is to continue I want a short disambiguation article called artificial life which references artificial evolution [or Artificial Life (the study of) or whatever we settle on] and Life (artificial) [or whatever we settle on]. Paul Beardsell 07:41, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Put all that aside for the moment. We both agree that an article on artificial life forms doesn't belong at artificial life. Leave aside for the moment the issue of what should go there. How do you feel about the article title life (artificial) as opposed to artificial life (file form) or synthetic life or anything else so far proposed? What sits best with you? --Numsgil 08:18, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

As I believe I have already said clearly: What best sits with me is (i) the article artificial life concerns itself about artificial life itself and not just the study of/towards artificial life and (ii) that the article should not assert that (the study of) Artificial Life is not about artificial life (life which does naturally occur). I think it likely I will go along with any naming or disambiguation scheme proposed which is consistent with those two points. Paul Beardsell 10:37, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

You want artificial life to be a disambiguation page, right? That is your present position? This would mean that artificial life forms doesn't get that namespace. How do you feel about life (artificial) being the namespace for the article on artificial life forms? --Numsgil 11:24, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

This simplifies my position a little. I only think that disambiguation is really necessary as long as you insist that Artificial Life (the field of study) is not about the study of artificial life (forms) and while you insist that artificial life (forms) should not be discussed in the Artificial Life article. It seems you may have now resiled a little from that position. If separate articles are necessary (or just desirable) I do not think that either usage should take the "[Aa]rtificial [Ll]ife" namespace slot to the exclusion of the other. You have suggested what we might call the article about the non-natural beasties, now tell me what you propose to call the article for the synonymous discipline where those are not studied. :-) Paul Beardsell 12:15, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

That's really a seperate issue, which is what we're discussing below, after all. For this tiny little section, I'm just interested in knowing what you'd like the article on the artificial variety of life to be called. It'd be one less issue to worry about if we could resolve it. --Numsgil 13:12, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Were disambiguation forced on us by the continued insistence that (the study of) Artificial Life (sic) is not about (inter alia) artificial life itself [although I note you no longer claim this] then I would be reluctantly happy with "life (artificial)" or even "synthetic life". But disambiguation is no longer necessary (although it may be a good idea) as you have conceded (or so it seemed to me - but see below) that artificial life itself is a subset of the domain of the discipline of Artificial Life (sic). Similarly, however: "For this tiny little section, I'm just interested in knowing what you'd like the article on the" discipline of Artificial Life (sic) "to be called. It'd be one less issue to worry about if we could resolve it." Paul Beardsell 20:32, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Disambiguation is necessary (explained in greater detail later in this same post). Also, I think you're using (sic) in the opposite way it's supposed to be used. You might want to double check your usage. --Numsgil 04:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

You're mistaken. "Sic" is used to label someone else's usage. It means, literally, "just so". Paul Beardsell 23:03, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Then we have a real problem. You're not just misquoting me, you're misquoting me to say things that are entirely 180 degrees from what I'm really saying. You quote me as saying "For this tiny little section, I'm just interested in knowing what you'd like the article on the 'discipline of Artificial Life (sic)' to be called." when I really said "For this tiny little section, I'm just interested in knowing what you'd like the article on the artificial variety of life to be called." I was hoping you just misunderstood what (sic) meant, and that it wasn't a malicious attempt at subverting my position. --Numsgil 06:18, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

No! I use your words in part and substitute some others in an attempt to throw back at you the same question you repeatedly wanted me to answer but from the other side of the argument. I do this carefully: Note the quotation marks! My purpose was to demonstrate that you might be reluctant to answer the same question you have been insisting here that I answer before proceding with more pertinent matters. I may have been misguided here but you are not reading this at all carefully. Paul Beardsell 06:47, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Critique of the status quo position:

William justifies this by saying that artificial life is or will be something that arises out of the study of artificial life. I note that Numsgil seems to think the likelihood of artificial life arising this or any other way is doubtful. William is likely correct, in my view, but note that eventually artificial life will be created by artificial life (forms) involved themselves in the academic and practical study of artificial life. But this is a poor argument for resolving a WP namespace issue. In the chicken or the egg argument the question is resolved: the egg did actually come first. But you don't read first in endless detail about eggs when you look up Chicken at WP.

Two things: first, I do not feel that Artificial Life giving rise to life (artificial) is "doubtful". I would say the possibility is quite promising. But certainly it's not a certainty. Second, and entirely off point, when you say "In the chicken or the egg argument the question is resolved: the egg did actually come first.", I'm very confused, because the article you link to doesn't resolve the question, it just highlights that the question is subjective and resolves it for various ways the question could be asked. Were you making a point when you said this that I'm not getting, other than the obvious one about the article chicken? Either way, I would point out that egg is linked very early in the chicken article. In fact, it's the third sentence. ;) --Numsgil 04:35, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Of course the article Artificial Life (the study of) must reference Life (artificial) in the 1st para and vice versa. Paul Beardsell 07:41, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

William echoes Numsgil's earlier suggestion that article naming be done by counting google hits, as if he does not

This takes my statements out of context - particularly the last statement I made respecting the means of determining the hierarchical structure to take, at least in the short term. The notion I have is to identify the number of issues with naming, such as that between two options, which was discussed earlier, and to which I expect the above sentence refers. Paul discussed two, perhaps more, different usages of the name Artificial Life. My count refers to such notions, not to the number of different categories into which references revealed a la Google might be compartmentalised. The latter is sophomoric. William R. Buckley 07:54, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

already know the answer this would produce. I counter this by using an earlier argument of William's, it is easier to write about easier stuff - hence the known result. Obviously there would have been more articles about manufacturing feathers and the flapping of wings than there would have been about actual manned flight, 200 years ago. That does not mean that an article on "manned flight", if WP had existed back then, should have been about the current research in how to mimic the evolution of feathers! That is Numsgil's argument, recast into manned flight terms.

But certainly it would imply that "manned flight" isn't the common usage of the term, right? And that would seem to imply that an article on, say, "flight" would, and arguably should, point to birds, bees, and bats (the three B's ;)), right? I'm sidestepping the argument that I'm tired of giving about the fact that Artificial Life is not the study of life (artificial) (or maybe I'm not, since I just mentioned it, huh? ;)) --Numsgil 04:35, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

The article on flight DOES refer to animal flight! It disambiguates all types of flight=flying (i.e. except running away etc). Thanks for the pointer. "The study of X" is not about "X". What sophistry! Paul Beardsell

Have you forgotten the context we were discussing? "What would wikipedia have 200 years ago?" What the present flight page has is sort of moot, right? It's 200 years removed. I'm not sure what a present day metaphor would be. --Numsgil 08:18, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Also, are you being facetious, or do you really not understand the point I try to make when I say that Artificial Life isn't the study of artificial life forms? I can go over it again, if you like ;) --Numsgil 08:18, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I have argued against this more than once and you have not attempted to address my argument at all. That "the study of X" can be called "X" (leaving aside the problem of the infinite regress) is then contradicted by the assertion that the object of "the study of X" is not "X". Name any field of study X where this usage occurs. They all pan out, case by case, like this one: As the intro to Mathematics acknowledges, sometimes we mean the study of mathematics when we say mathematics. But no one says the study of mathematics is not about maths! Paul Beardsell 10:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that you misunderstand the prefix "the study of". Suppose I say that I am studying Biology, or am involved in the study of Biology. Does that mean that I'm involved in a meta study? Do I study biologists as part of some sociological study? No, probably not. I'm using "studying" and "the study of" as redundant prefixes. The "ology" suffix and the "the study of" prefix both mean the same thing. The redundancy is for emphasis. Artificial Life might have been called something that ended in -ology, if Langston hadn't decided to call the field Artificial Life. Suppose the field was called ProtoViviology. I would still use the phrase "the study of protoviviology" from time to time, to emphasize that it's a field of study. Especially since Artificial Life doesn't end in an -ology, you need that redundant phrase tacked on the from when you're introducing people to the field. It's confusing, and highly semantic, I'll agree, but I didn't make up the terms, and I don't get to decide. That goes for you too. --Numsgil 11:24, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

No, I do not misunderstand this. (i) If all you were talking about were a redundancy that would be fine. But you are (or have been) saying Alife is not about artificial life! That is like saying "biology is not about life". (ii) Whereas "the study of biology" can be a redundancy and not a meta-study thus allowing us to say, in some contexts, that "the study of biology" is "biology" we can NEVER say that "the study of life is life" or, meaning that, that "biology is life". Similarly, artificial life may be (in context) the field of study but it is NOT a field of study not about artificial life. Paul Beardsell 12:33, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

This is where the idiosyncracies of the English language and Langston in particular come in. Remember, he named the field pretty much at its birth, during the first ALife conference. He hoped that it would lead to a demonstration of strong Alife theory: that is, the creation of new life forms (more accurately, he already felt that he had synthesized life, so he was promoting strong alife theory). The field's christening was one (influential) man's choice, and it just sort of stuck. It's not necessarily the best choice, so don't read too much into it. Presumably Langston wanted Artificial Life to be a field that studied the little critters running around in his simulation, and their ilk. What the field is now, and what Langston wanted it to be, are probably a little different. There's alot of modern emphasis on practical application. Certainly we still study digital organisms, but there are alot of other areas that are also included. Likewise, Langston came from a background without -ology. Computer Science, Chaos Theory, Bioinformatics, etc. Modern sciences don't have ology at the end. He was probably following in that tradition. The naming of the field was fairly arbitrary and a little accidental. It wasn't coined by a linguist, so be careful how much you read into it. --Numsgil 13:12, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm reminded of Alice in wonderland. Specifically Humpty Dumpty on words.

I think this reinforces my point. I am arguing that words mean what they mean. That "Artificial Life" has been taken by some to mean, in certain contexts, "the study of artificial life forms and their constituent systems", is regrettable. But that does not remove from the phrase of "artificial life" the ordinary adjective+noun meaning. It does not reserve exclusively the phrase for the specialist, elitist purpose. Paul Beardsell 21:02, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree. One use of a word should not steal validity from another use. Such is the rich tapestry of the English language. But that's not what's at stake here. What's at stake is which article gets awarded the namespace. And I would still posit that the (far) more common usage should get it. Would you disagree? --Numsgil 04:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

A quick example of someone using "the study of biology", because I know you'll ask for a real reference. on the Biology page, search for the phrase "Molecular biology is the study of biology at a molecular level." Clearly they don't mean that Molecular Biology is the study of biologists at the molecular level! --Numsgil 11:28, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

No, and just as clearly, they don't mean molecular biology is "life at the molecular level": It is "the study of life at the molecular level." Paul Beardsell 12:33, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Again, disassociate the two terms Artificial Life and artificial life in your head, and this all becomes much easier. Pretend they're different. When you see Artificial Life, change it to protoviviology. "A rose by any other name...", as they say. Artificial Life is just a name that happens to share the same letters as artificial life (forms). --Numsgil 13:12, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I conceded this point long ago. The problem is that not only are the same letters shared, and our brains cope reasonably well with the necessary disambiguation, but that there is only one slot in the WP namespace for that combination of letters. That is the issue. As you have already conceded that what you now playfully suggest could be called protoviviology has has its domain a superset of artificial life itself then all protestation that these two are distinct fall away. Paul Beardsell 20:46, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Read further. Neither is a superset of the other. I explain this further later on. It seems to me like you latched onto the first thing I said that you wanted to hear, and didn't read the rest. To be honest, my position hasn't changed a single iota in about 3 weeks. Just my ability to express it coherently, and have others listen ;) --Numsgil 04:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

As to the real point, please read very carefully, because I'm sure I've said this at least 4 different times. Artificial Life studies some things that are not alive, period. Genetic algorithms and many others topics are often the subject of papers (quite often. The last Journal set I aquired had a third of its bulk devoted to visualization techniques for genetic algorithms). But no one claims that they're alive. Artificial Life also sometimes studies real life, usually in the context of comparison to digital organisms, but I wouldn't say exclusively. Biological life is not artificial, so it can't qualify as "artificial life forms". Clearly the Venn diagram of the domain of study for Artificial Life, that is, what Articial Life studies, and artificial life forms, would look like this:

. There is some overlap, but it's not a bijection. That is why "the study of X" is not the study of X. Confusing, but true. --Numsgil 11:24, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

OK! So the field of study, Artificial Life, is ALSO about artificial life (forms), not just their component bits. Hurrah! Paul Beardsell 12:33, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I am happy enough to see it acknowledged that A and B have a non-empty intersection. But it goes further than that. What aspect of artificial life (forms) would (the study of) Artificial Life not consider to be in its domian? B is a subset of A. Paul Beardsell 12:44, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

HAL 9000, or something like it, might be considered alive. But it clearly falls to AI research, not ALife research. You should discuss HAL 9000 and its ilk in an article about artificial life forms. But it doesn't really belong in an article about Artificial Life. --Numsgil 13:12, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

That's a straw artificial-life argument! I have not mentioned HAL 9000. If HAL 9000 is alive then it it deserves a mention in the fiction section of the artificial life article. If HAL 9000 is not alive then it does not. So HAL 9000 does not illustrate the point you are trying to make. It seems artificial life (forms) remains a subset of the domain of the discipline of Artificial Life (sic). Paul Beardsell 20:46, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I think you're missing the point. I wasn't trying to discredit you, I was answering your question: "What aspect of artificial life (forms) would (the study of) Artificial Life not consider to be in its domian?". Even if HAL is alive, it doesn't belong on the Artificial Life page, because it has nothing to do with ALife research. It belongs to AI research. It does belong on the page for life (artificial), which is what I'm trying to say. Again, there is a non empty intersection between what Artificial Life studies, and what artificial life could be. But neither is entirely contained within the other. The overlap is not even the majority of either, I'd say. --Numsgil 04:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

The mapping of WP article names to article contents should reflect WP readers' reasonable expectations, not to satisfy the seemingly entrenched position of some small elite.

I've never been an elite before. I'm excited! ;) --Numsgil 04:35, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

That "the study of X" is sometimed referred to as "X" is simply a matter of shorthand, initially resolvable always by context. Later, out of habit and laziness, "X" may become identified as "the study of X" by those who would otherwise have to say "the study of X", again and again, or would have to be careful of context before abbreviating "the study of X" to "X". "The study of X" cannot mean "X" because then we have an infinte regress. The only possible way out of this logic fallacy is to say, as Numsgil as done, that "X" is not "X" at all. Or that "X" is impossible.

Paul Beardsell 23:20, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Would you agree to what Will and I are saying if we could find a way to conclusively show that usage of Artificial Life referring to the field is not only >, but >> than usage of artificial life to refer to a class of life? If so, it seems to me to just be a question of arriving at a fair way of determing it (or the inverse ) --Numsgil 04:35, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

No. There is (most everyone agrees) as yet NO artificial life. How much could be written about it, already? That does not mean that artificial life should not yet have an article about it. Paul Beardsell 07:41, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Paul, I challenge you to cite your evidence that no artificial life exists. Indeed, I have already given one example of acceptance of equivalence in the being that is a virus, biological or computational. Further, respected researchers claim living systems exist within computational environments. Also, Jay, my notion of counting, as stated above, is quite different from a mere survey of Google. Look at the issue linquistically, count the number of different usages, not instantiations of the various usages. I want to consider categories, not populations. William R. Buckley 08:10, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

William, I apologise if I misrepresented your view, but I did not say that no artificial life exists. Just that most think none yet exists. [By "artificial life" I assume you mean artificial life itself and not the study thereof.] Paul Beardsell 10:29, 17 January 2007 (UTC) Yes, this is what I mean, specific *organisms* , and no, I would not agree that most people think artificial life does not yet exist, i.e. that there are no organisms of artificial life. There, I used the word (phrase, artificial life), to well specify two different things, specific examples and the general case. William R. Buckley 20:26, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

How are we going to count the number of usages? What are our sources going to be? It's a great idea in theory, but how do we practically go about doing it? For instance, do we read through articles in Artificial Life journals? That would see to be a bias, wouldn't it? Also, a seperate point: remember that artificial life other than, say, making a bacteria from scratch, is impossible by definition of life (at least, the definition of life taught to me in my Bio class not so many years ago). I would say that saying that artificial life (lower case, improper noun, paraphrased from Paul) is commonly accepted to not exist is a pretty safe statement, though finding sources is going to be hard. Let me see if I can find something... --Numsgil 08:31, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree it is a difficult task. First, we discuss it, as we are now. If you read my writing, you might think otherwise but, in fact, I have not mastered English. I know that my command of grammar is not strong, that a grammarian would quickly find reason to comment. So, I am not the best person to direct such a task, as this analysis of the usage of words, as to variety versus frequency of expression. Still, the discussion I mention (which I will label with the TLA WRB) shows these classes of usage. We should begin there. Give me a bit more time and I will prepare a new discussion topic that begins with these categories. The group can then work to produce the analysis. This is just my suggestion. Alternative means to settle the agreed issue of subject organisation/article hierarchy are welcome. William R. Buckley 20:26, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Here's a quote from the life article. Emphasis added by me: "Some individuals contest such definitions of life on philosophical grounds, and offer the following as examples of life: viruses which reproduce; storms or flames which "burn"; certain computer software programs which are programmed to mutate and evolve; future software programs which may evince (even high-order) behavior; machines which can move; and some forms of proto-life consisting of metabolizing cells without the ability to reproduce. [citation needed]

"Still, most scientists would not call such phenomena expressive of life. Generally all seven characteristics are required for a population to be considered a life form." Again, saying that artificial life forms are not commonly accepted to exist is a pretty safe statement. --Numsgil 08:37, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Problem is, this view is biocentric. Those characteristics tend to be locomotion, respiration, injestion, reproduction, (I am writing these from memory) excretion, (what are the other two, since I took high school biology about 35 years ago) ... First, life forms are not populations, they are individuals, whether they be cells or of higher order. If the definition contains any hint of substrate specificity, it is biocentric. You base your argument for terms of acceptance of article construction and content upon a bias, which bias is at odds with the axioms of the subject of the article. William R. Buckley 20:26, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

No argument that it's biocentric, almost laughably so. And I appreciate the irony of in your last sentence, too. But the fact remains that if you ask the majority of biologists if there are any sorts of life known to science beyond the naturally occuring biological kind, they would say no. And that needs to be reflected in article construction, even to our chagrin. --Numsgil 04:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree, Paul. Plenty of theoretical objects have articles. Such as Dyson sphere for instance. But that's not what I asked. Clearly something needs to go at the location artificial life. The options are either: a disambiguation page, artificial life forms, or the field of Artificial Life. As Will and I have both pointed out, a dedicated disambiguation article makes the most sense when there are lots of possible articles to disambiguate. Top links make more sense when there are only two or maybe three articles to disambiguate.

Exactly my point. I would give a little, to greater top link count, if interveening layers exist below. William R. Buckley 20:26, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Would you agree with this assessment? If not, why not? Assuming you do, that means that the article space artificial life would either belong to the field or the life form, right? In this case, the article space should go to the more common usage of the term, right? In which case what we need is a way of determining which is the more common usage, right? Please expand on any of the steps I've made to which you disagree, and the reasons for which you disagree. That should help us reach an understanding, instead of just arguing. --Numsgil 08:18, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Every use of "X" on its own when the "study of X" is intended is just shorthand. At first this would always have been obvious from context. Some will unfortunately not realise this and start to use "X" as if it meant "the study of X". Some of those who are actually conducting investigations into X are more likely to make this mistake or less likely to detect it! Another level will be pushed. There will be a journal called "Artificial Life" which is not the life forms themselves, nor it is the study of the beasties, it is the journal. In the editorial office often they will say "Artificial Life" and MEAN the journal itself! If you like: meta-artificial life is the study of artificial life. Meta-meta-artificial life is the journal covering the study of artificial life. Paul Beardsell 07:55, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Be careful of how you do your count, qualify the answer, etc. I do not really have the time to attend the task. Tell me what you find. The best solution is one agreed upon, so keep that point in mind. Wikipedia should not be a contest of will or ego. What we should want is correct and quality articles. William R. Buckley 20:26, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll see what I can come up with if Paul thinks the excercise valuable. It's alot of work, so I'd prefer not to personally go into it if I could avoid it. --Numsgil 04:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

The number of elements in a superset is at least the number of elements of its subset. Paul Beardsell 07:25, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

And the angles in a triangle must add up to a half circle. Unfortunately, neither rule really helps us in this case. I'm assuming your answer is that trying to calculate the usage isn't worthwhile? --Numsgil 07:44, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

"Obtuse" is not only a property of a triangles! Obviously, every google mention of the subset necessarily refers also to the superset. As the domain of alife (study) "includes" (your word) the study of alife (forms) [although where you are on your continual flip flop on this issue right now I cannot tell] the google count will not resolve anything. Paul Beardsell 23:11, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Have a look at the article History of artificial life. To be consistent with this article it would have to an article about "the history of research techniques of a discipline NOT actually about artificial life". Not so? Paul Beardsell 08:00, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Exactly so. And it is. I know this because I made the article. Read the article from start to end. The things about the duck, etc. in the beginning are a sort of human interest "isn't that nice" that funnels down into the article proper. The article is about the history of the field. --Numsgil 08:21, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

But I thought that you continued to assert that "Artificial Life" (by which you mean "the study of") is not about "artificial life" ("forms"). This seems to gybe with your treatment of these supposedly disjoint concepts in the history of artificial life article. Paul Beardsell 10:24, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

This is a sort of complex thing, but let me try to sum up what's going on. In November, I rewrote the alife page top to bottom. The old article was terrible, primarily because it was mashing life (artificial) and Artificial Life in the same article, though I didn't really understand that at the time. Most of the old page was a very dense history of the field over the last few decades. This is what you find in the history of alife article. I pretty much just copy and pasted it over. It's salvagable, and contains some good information, but it's just way too dense for an encyclopedic article, so I relegated it to its own article. --Numsgil 11:24, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Most of what was wrong with the old page was because of the mixing of the two ideas. That's why I'm so against it now. Explore the alife article's history in september, to get an idea of what I'm talking about. Note that the alife history article is predominately about the history of the field. It excludes most of what you would want to see in an article on the history of artificial life forms, aside from that opening paragraph with the duck :P. --Numsgil 11:24, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Telling questions

[edit] Is artificial life possible?

Is artificial life possible? I say it is. I think there will be man-made / manufactured / synthesized objects which are truly alive. Some here have said that such life will not be called "artificial life" but "life". I agree they will be truly alive and deny what those who wish to drop the moniker "artificial" must think "artificial" means: They think it means "not really". Not it doesn't! It means "not naturally occurring". Artificial life will one day exist. What say you? Paul Beardsell 07:35, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

The reason that "artificial" will be dropped is because we will come to see no difference, other than the superficial, that is, substrate. In the end, life is life, whatever its origin. William R. Buckley 20:33, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I really wish that this will be the case. But note how the newspapers continue to insist on reporting the race group membership of everyone. There will of course be good reasons to discriminate. Likely at med school doctors will be taught different techniques for different chemical substrates. Paul Beardsell 20:51, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Let the bigots speak loudly and often, that the rest of us will know them well. William R. Buckley 07:18, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I am being obviously disingenuous here: My real question is what do we mean by "artificial life" when we ask if it is possible. Of course "the study of a.l." is possible. The questions asks if the beasties will ever be manufactured. Paul Beardsell 10:17, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What does the phrase "artificial life itself" refer to?

Another telling question exposing the meaning of the term "artificial life": What does the phrase "artificial life itself" refer to? Paul Beardsell 00:51, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

In regards to what? Where are you lifting the phrase from? --Numsgil 04:06, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I lift it from nowhere. It's called English. What do you think is meant by the phrase "artificial life itself"? Paul Beardsell 07:25, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm really confused. Your first paragraph asks if artificial life is possible at all. You respond to yourself with a question of the meaning of a phrase. Seems non sequiter to me. You're asking what is meant from the phase in general? Well, following your non sequiter, I'd say that since itself is a reflexive pronoun used primarily as the direct object of sentences, the meaning is unclear given that you present it as a sentence fragment. It could be part of the sentence: "The dog began learning artificial life itself, without my help at all!" or "Will you learn some chaos theory, or only artificial life itself?" etc. So again, in regards to what? What context are you asking about? --Numsgil 08:25, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

It is usual to present separate ideas in separate paragraphs. As to which of your two contexts I am asking about, it is the latter. As I have used it and I think you have read it elsewhere on this page: "The study of artificial life" as opposed to "artificial life itself". I am sure you recognise I am trying to undermine your assertion that the study of Artificial Life is not actually about artificial life, i.e. artificial life itself, artificial life forms. Just as I would insist that Numsgil is Numsgil himself, and not the study of Numsgil, however puzzling he may be. Paul Beardsell 10:17, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh. ;) --Numsgil 11:24, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is the study of non-naturally occurring life a subset of the domain of the discipline ALife?

An easy proof that it is not a subset would be finding one example. The best done so far is HAL 9000. If it is alive then it is a legitimate study of ALife researchers. If not, then it still might be as it may have interesting components relevant to ALife research. But, as it is not alive, then it does not falsify the proposition. I note that Numsgil disagrees with the proposition and uses HAL 9000 as an example to illustrate his disagreement. He says HAL is nothing to do with ALife BECAUSE it is an example of AI. (See next section.) But he denies HAL is alive anyway so no contest. Paul Beardsell 06:54, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

When did I say HAL wasn't alive? You wouldn't happen to be glossing over my posts, would you? --Numsgil 07:29, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

You said HAL was alive? If you did I apologise for misrepresenting your view but thank you for the opportunity to make this point (again): HAL is not naturally occurring and therefore is artificial: HAL, if it is alive, is therefore an example of an artificial life form. By definition and tautology. But you have stated that HAL would not be properly the subject of alife (study). I understood you to have meant that HAL is artificially intelligent but not alife (form, example of). Clarification of your view is needed here. Paul Beardsell 23:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

You come so close to understanding what I'm saying, but you shy away from it. HAL is an artificial life form whose study does not fall within the bounds of Artificial Life. Neither wet, soft, or hard (see article revision I just made for definition of those terms). --Numsgil 06:28, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

All artificial life falls within the bounds of Artificial Life. You yourself say so, elsewhere. Paul Beardsell 06:49, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I say that if an entity is alive and if it is not naturally occurring then it is (a) artificial and (b) life by definition and tautology respectively. As ALife is the study of the components and systems necessary for artificial life (bottom up) and is (or will be) of the beasties themselves (top down) then it seems that all (putative) artificial life (forms) are legitimate targets of research by ALIfe researchers. Indeed, I'm sure all or most ALIfe researchers would jump at the chance. Paul Beardsell 06:54, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Where are you getting your definition of Artificial Life from? It seems oddly incongruent from every [definition http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/artificial%20life] I've ever seen. It's really easy to win a game when you make up your own rules, isn't it? --Numsgil 07:29, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I deny I am doing this. The position we are now at, the position we seem to agree on, however many hoops we have been forced to jump through, is: The study of artificial life (forms) is a subset of the domain of alife research. Correct? Paul Beardsell 23:28, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Nope. Neither is a subset of the other. --Numsgil 06:28, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Here you go again. Either you contradict yourself or you redefine the word "include". You said the domain of alife (research) includes the study of alife (forms). Paul Beardsell 06:51, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is HAL 9000 alive?

Is a body which is intelligent also alive? Not necessarily, I suggest. And is something which is alive also intelligent. No. But does the fact that a body is artificial and also intelligent preclude it from being alive? No. If artificially alive entities are the legitimate study of ALife researchers (and name me one other than Numsgil who says they're not [or won't be when they exist]) then the presence of intelligence by the artificially alive body will not preclude interest from ALife researchers.

Paul Beardsell 06:54, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

When did I say that artificially alive entities aren't the study of Alife? Replicating nanobots would meet this criteria I think. --Numsgil 07:46, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I would say that something is alive if its death can elicit empathy from a human audience. It's not a scientific definition, I know, but I think it can be a practical one for exploring synthetic life. --Numsgil 08:10, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

When HAL 9000 was systematically disabled by that inferior carbon based life form, light hydraulic oil leaked from the corner of my left Zeiss lens. Paul Beardsell 22:32, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What is Creatures?

Is Creatures artificial life? Or just a simulation of artificial life? Or a tool of ALife research?

Paul Beardsell 07:00, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Potentially all three, potentially none, depending on how you're defining things. Do you need to be involved in a published article to be a tool for research? --Numsgil 07:18, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I was wondering what your motivation was to including a screen shot of something that was an example of artificial life (you admit this is potentially true in the preceding paragraph) if, as you claim, the domain of ALife research does not include artificial life (forms). Paul Beardsell 07:21, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I never said that the domain of ALife research does not include artificial life (forms). Perhaps you should try reading what I write from time to time. Might move the discussion along. --Numsgil 07:31, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

It is you who are evidently not in touch with what you yourself have written! You flip flop on the issue of whether the study of artificial life (forms) is a subset of the domain of ALife research. This above para is the 5th time. The only explanation I can come up with for this is that English words mean exactly what you want them to mean at the time and this changes word by word over time to suit your purpose. E.g. I anticipate that you are about to tell us "include", above, means something other than the common meaning. Paul Beardsell 22:45, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Neither is a subset of the other. I said that there was overlap. Overlap does not imply proper inclusion of one within the other. --Numsgil 06:28, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

It has been difficult to ascertain your position. But you used the word "include". Subset. Paul Beardsell 06:58, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

This falls in the realm of "put up or shut up". If you believe I am waffling on my position, please quote two instances where I contradict myself. I'll then either agree that I'm waffling, or explain how you've misinterpreted me. It's all on this page, in black and white. Shouldn't be too hard to find, right ;) --Numsgil 10:27, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

You make me feel like a bully with your "hit me, hit me" taunts. I pull my punches: Numsgil 13 Jan: "Artificial life the field of study DOES NOT study artificial life forms." Numsgil 18 Jan: "I never said that the domain of ALife research does not include artificial life (forms)." Paul Beardsell 11:30, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

My full quote is "Artificial life the field of study DOES NOT study artificial life forms. Supposing you took the strong ALife position, you could say that the agents that alife the field studies are artificial life forms, but that doesn't mean that all or even most of the imaginable synthetic life is studied by artificial life the field. Also, alife the field studies phenomenon that are not alive, no matter how you define life. Things such as genetic algorithms and artificial chemistries are not "alive", or even claimed to be alive." From context it's clear that I meant that Artificial Life does not focus on the study of synthetic life, more than that I meant that the field will never study synthetic life.

By way of analogy, Biology does not study cryptids, though once the cryptid is discovered to actually exist, it becomes the subject of biological study. --Numsgil 11:43, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Now that I think on it, I think the more proper analogy would be between cryptozoology and discovered cryptids, though I'm not sure. This is a complex issue, and I'm at a loss for a good metaphor! --Numsgil 11:56, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

In light of the above I intend to change the introductory paragraph of the article to say that ALife includes the study of artificial life (forms) as well as their constituent components and systems. Paul Beardsell 22:45, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] When artificial life forms are widely agreed to exist, will ALife researchers refrain from studying them?

Artificial life researchers do not refrain from studying things which are alive any more than they refrain from studying things which are not alive. So, to answer your question, no. Which is what I've meant when I said that Artificial Life does not concern itself with wether what it studies is alive or not. --Numsgil 11:51, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What is the name of the field studying components and systems useful in building towards artificial life (forms)?

Synthetic biology --Numsgil 11:48, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Which is a subset of Artificial Life (the study of). See below. Paul Beardsell 12:05, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What is the name of the field working now on building artificial life (forms)?

synthetic biology primarily. And they're the only ones that are really even close --Numsgil 11:49, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Which is (or is a subset of) Artificial Life (the study of). See below. Paul Beardsell 12:06, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Definition of ALife

ALife is the study of the components and systems necessary for artificial life and is (or will be, as soon as they are available) the study of the artificial life forms themselves. Discuss. Paul Beardsell 07:03, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Enough said (and please read all four definitions fully). --Numsgil 07:14, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

And see also here and here. You have already agreed that no one can claim exlusivity on the meaning of a phrase. Paul Beardsell 07:18, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

!= Thumbnail. It's called a compound word. --Numsgil 07:36, 18 January 2007 (UTC) Also, I never claimed that no one can claim exclusivity on the meaning of a phrase. There are plenty of words with only one definition. Such as supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. What I said was the no usage of a word should steal validity from another use. Meaning that word usage isn't a zero sum game. Do not take this to mean that all usages should be treated equally, however. --Numsgil 08:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes! But it has been you started of by saying there is no way you would consider the alife (forms) being covered on this page. Even though you have now resiled from the position that alife (study) and alife (forms) are not related, even though you now concede (at times) that the study of alife (forms) is a subset of the domain of alife (study), you continue to resist this. Paul Beardsell 22:49, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Synthetic Life and Biology

This is primarily aimed towards Paul. This article describes something very interesting. I'd say that's a closer mark to what you think Artificial Life is, right? --Numsgil 10:24, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

A follow up, this article from NOVA confuses things to no end. They clearly aren't talking about Artificial Life, but artificial life. They also use "synthetic life" in places. Just trying to show some good faith ;) --Numsgil 10:40, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I am not arguing that alife (forms) should not be addressed or even overviewed on the same page that documents alife (study). You are. Even though you now concede that alife (forms) are part of what is (or will be) the subject of alife (study). Paul Beardsell 22:53, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Simulated reality

I've moved the see also to simulated reality to synthetic life, since it would seem to have very little to do with the present field of study, and a little more to do with the life forms which are artificial. --Numsgil 05:56, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My (Numsgil's) Position on synthetic life and artificial life

I don't have alot of time, so I'm just going to write this here, at the end, since this is the subject of so much confusion.

1. The domain of what Artificial Life studies and what could possibly be called synthetic life overlap, but neither is entirely contained within the other.

A. An example of an overlap would be artificial cells created through synthetic biology.

B. An example of Artificial Life only would be genetic algorithms.

C. An example of synthetic life only could be a bodiless AI, such as HAL from 2001 a Space Odyssey.

2. Partly due to the above, and partly because otherwise the article would be too long, Artificial Life and synthetic life need two seperate articles. 3. Also partly because synthetic life would be at the moment an article primarily on philosophy, and Artificial Life is primarily a grounded hard science, the two belong in seperate articles. 3. A disambiguation link at the top of both articles makes more sense than a dedicated disambiguation page, since it's unlikely that another article needing the artificial life namespace will occurr anytime soon. 4. The artificial life namespace should belong to Artificial Life instead of synthetic life, partly because Artificial Life seems to be the more common usage (I can do some work to verify this if people think it's worthwhile to do so). 5. The synthetic life article should remain at synthetic life because it better allows for a crossover to the synthetic biology article (when synthetic life is created, it will probably first be from work done in synthetic biology. See NOVA site I linked eariler)

I will begin work on expanding both Artificial Life and synthetic life to encorporate some sources, but such work shouldn't conflict too heavily with the outcome of this discussion. --Numsgil 06:12, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

For your POV it to be reflected to the exclusion of other POV's in the article breaks the WP NPOV policy. Paul Beardsell 06:54, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

"All Wikipedia articles must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), representing fairly and without bias all significant views that have been published by a reliable source." Thus we must present both Weak and Strong alife philosophy, especially in the intro, to be fair to both. And we need to start including sources. If you don't like mine, find your own! --Numsgil 10:30, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A partial statement of Paul Beardsell's views on what should be in the artificial life article

(i) There is no difference between synthetic life (forms) and artificial life (forms). If HAL is alive then he is both artificial and synthetic. If he is not an example of synthetic life, then he is not an example of artificial life either. HAL is portrayed as a conscious computer. Whether or not that makes him alive I am undecided about, and affects nothing I have said on this talk page one iota.

I would agree with your first premise. Artificial life (forms) and synthetic life are synonyms, used totally interchangably. --Numsgil 10:27, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

(ii) All artificial life (forms) are in the domain of Artificial Life (study). That does not mean everything in that domain is alive, far from it. Nevertheless, ALife researchers would be fighting amongst each other to get their hands on examples of artificial life (forms) (or, equivalently, synthetic life (forms)). In so doing they would not consider themselves to be changing their field of research.

Are we talking Artificial Life as it could be, or the state of the field this very moment? An important distinction I think. --Numsgil 10:27, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Some say there are already examples of artificial life! Those researchers into artificial life who say this are not standing by the sidelines inviting other disciplines in, nor are they re-printing their business cards. But it makes no difference. Fermat's Last Theorem was in the domain of mathematics before it was proved. DNA was in the realm of molecular biology (and other fields) before the structure was determined. There are countless examples. Another: Those studying manned flight before the Wright brothers got off the ground would never have claimed that examples of manned flight were outside their domain of study. Manned flight was their goal. And, by analogue, researchers into artificial life ... Paul Beardsell 11:10, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Then you're talking about Artificial Life as it could be, right? --Numsgil 11:43, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Another angle on this: (And this is another "telling question".) What is the name of the field of study which studies components and systems useful in working towards artificial life (forms), and which is working towards building artificial life (forms)? Paul Beardsell 11:10, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

And this, quoting William (earlier on this page): As Christopher G. Langton stated at the first alife conference, which I attended, alife is the study of life as we know it within the LARGER context of life as it might be. As it might be! Paul Beardsell 11:15, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Artificial Life as Langston invisioned it, and Artificial Life as it exists today aren't quite the same. The field of study which studies components and systems used in working towards artificial life (forms) is actually synthetic biology. --Numsgil 11:45, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

(iii) Just as mathematics (itself) and (the study of) mathematics are addressed at mathematics in overview (and there are numerous other similar WP examples), so should artificial life (itself) and (the study of) artificial life be addressed in overview at artificial life.

Paul Beardsell 09:20, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] On the current state of the article.

I am happy, as Paul notes, with what I produced. I do want to get the generalisation contained in Jay's copy, respecting the variety of models, soft, hard, and wet. I like the capitalisation note. I do not want to change the form. I will continue to discuss the content. Paul, don't be so quick to throw out an improvement just because it is buried in other text that you do not like. We now agree on what the subject is (the field, its subject matter, any products produced - examples of living beings of other than natural origin), we can find a way to agree on article structure. Mine is just a suggestion. By WP rules, it would seem the vote of 2 to 1 restricts direct contravening alteration. That does not mean that discussion is out. Jay, let me see how we can keep comity. William R. Buckley 07:29, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm unsure what improvement I have discarded which you think should be kept. Please, edit boldly! Also, whereas I have sometimes thought agreement is close, I do not see unanimous agreement on a central issue: What is in the domain of ALife research? Paul Beardsell 08:58, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Apparently someone else understood my argument, for the soft, hard, and wet are back in the opening paragraph. All in all, I think the progress is good. There is debate, even heated, without a lot of acrimony. I think you guys (Paul and Jay) are a bit too argumentative but, you have also shown moments of comity. That is what we should have, comity, so that agreements can be made, and so that others later will not be so quick to undo our work. William R. Buckley 18:53, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

The first paper I had published was written together with James R. Hauser, a physics professor of mine at CalPoly SLO. I was then a student of the department, and he was a tenure-tracked assistant or associate professor. Jim was a very smart man, and perhaps the best mentor I ever had - and this is not to deny any similar praise I might give to Bruce Weber, formerly of CalState Fullerton. But I digress. The point is that Jim and I spent over two years writing, and rewriting, battling over wording and content. The result was a very fine piece of writing, which became the cover story of the publication in which it appeared. Moral: The quality of the output is related to the quality of the input, and enemies can't work together. William R. Buckley 18:53, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

If you look carefully at my edit, what I was doing was including a reference, which hitherto has been a mythological entity! I would suggest that we start to bring references into the article. If we have opinions, there should be valid references to them, right? The hard, soft, and wet description was pulled straight from the reference I added into the opening paragraph. The reference was an eye opener for me, and should probably be so for you (plural) as well. The definition I used was a combination of those from dictionary.com's, which itself pulls from about 2 or 3 different dictionaries. Nothing I added was POV, quite the contrary. It was purposely ambigous and all referenced. Can you say the same? --Numsgil 10:27, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

As to your question, if you read this article (or even just skim the sub topics) it gives a very reasonable overview of what ALife research is up to. And this way you get a reference and avoid the problems of artificial labels ;) Especially read "Box 2", which is a list of the emphasis of modern ALife research, which pretty much sums up my understanding of the field. --Numsgil 10:57, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, now I get to complain (if only in jest). What the hell happened to my capital L? In the Bedau paper referenced by Numsgil, we have the construction

"Artificial life (also known as ‘ALife’) ..."

So, again I ask, where is my capital L? William R. Buckley 18:42, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't sure how to handle this. I've seen Alife, ALife, and alife all used by various people at various times. I would say that ALife is probably the "most" correct, but I think alife and Alife are more common (ALife looks weird, I think). It seemed odd to me to do something like: "also known as ALife, Alife or alife", since the only difference is capitalization. The opening sentence is already overly complex I think, I'll try to slim it down. If you can think of an elegant way to address this point, that would be great. I was writing at like 4 in the morning, so my mind was a little soft ;) --Numsgil 05:53, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

As suggested, only in jest. Well, probably, anyway. I do agree that ALife, Alife, alife, and Artificial Life is a bit long ... worded. It is bad enough to see the list of the alternatives. Perhaps a note about various capitalisations for the first two letters of the compound word, and this as a footnote. Do we get to include footnotes in WP? What is written is probably the best of alternatives (save that footnote), so long as we stay consistent. In looking at the lower half of the article, I notice one sentence that include ALife. I am all for simplification, even to the exclusion of a label that does get used in the field. So, at the very least, we should bury a note about the various expressions of the name. Of course, readers should be sufficiently flexible that ALife would not cause mental discomfort. William R. Buckley 05:58, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

A footnote seems an excellent idea. I've seen them done in other articles before. I'll try to figure out how to set something up. --Numsgil 21:59, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Synthetic biology and (the study of) artificial life

We're told that there is no difference between "synthetic life" and "artificial life". The "study of life" is called "biology". "Synthetic biology" is then the "study of artificial life", which is (or, if you like and for the sake of argument, is part of**), "Artificial Life (study)". Therefore "synthetic biology" and "Artificial Life (the study of)" are the same. (From **: Or, possibly, "synthetic biology" is part of "Artificial Life (the study of)". When asked what the name of the field is which studies something is called and the answer given is X, and X is a subset of Y, then Y is also a correct answer. Paul Beardsell 12:03, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Numsgil kindly provided this ref.

The only issue in your reasoning is at the end when you say that "the study of artificial life" is (or is part of) Artificial Life. This seems to be a semantic argument instead of one based on evidence. To be honest, my understanding is that synthetic biology could have been considered part of (wet) Alife by Alife advocates, but that those involved in synthetic biology prefer to distance themselves from Alife. Why don't you tell the people on the synthetic biology page that they are just a subset of Artificial Life, and see how they take it? --Numsgil 12:16, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

If you read through the articles, and watch the clip, from that NOVA site, you'll find a conspicous absence of any reference to Artificial Life (ie: the field). --Numsgil 12:17, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Search this site for the phrase "synthetic biology". The problem with claiming that the attempt to create synthetic life is a proper subset of the field of Artificial Life is that those attempting to synthesize life don't think so! --Numsgil 12:23, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

This appears to be the main site for synthetic biology. Haven't been able to find a reference for Artificial Life yet... --Numsgil 12:26, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

If I had to guess, I'd say what's likely to happen is that "wet" alife will entirely be absorbed into synthetic biology, because that's where the grants and research journals are that potential wet Alife-ers are going to want to use. Artificial Life will eventually be 100% synonymous with in-silico. Just my impression anyway. --Numsgil 12:30, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../a/r/t/Talk%7EArtificial_life_7c8c.html"